Stupid question....... Are system quicks different than startup quicks ? I have assigned a site to to startup #3 and quick 1. I hear traffic, but the S0: line shows 1 when a transmission occurs.
Startup keys can be used to load different sets of channel & system files from a single programming file.
Back before most of my local agencies moved to trunked systems, often Phase II & Simulcast, my 'grab & go' scanner was one of my 396XTs. There is a regional trip, around 150 miles each way, that I take a number of times a year, to visit friends in a rural county west of Dallas/Fort Worth.
Your 996P2 is listed as having '25,000 channels' of memory. No one would want to program, and scan, all of those at once. It would take a
long time to get all the way through before starting over. But, with startup keys, you can break that up so that the scanner only monitors a specific set of systems. That can be changed by programming different sets of channels & systems in groups sharing a StartUp key.
I created a programming file for my trip, splitting the systems up via a startup key. Before leaving home, I used Startup Key 1, which loaded all the systems that I can hear in the metro area. Once I got west of Fort Worth, I power cycled the scanner, & used Startup 2. That shifted monitoring to systems I could hear on the road. Once I arrived, I switched to startup 3, which loaded the systems I could here in that specific area. For a system that was receivable in more than one segment, the system was programmed twice, once for each corresponding key. A system that I
always wanted to have active, such as Texas DPS (the Highway Patrol) is entered without using a startup designation. Thus, it always scans. Going home, I switched to key 2, then later to key 1 when I was back in the metro area. The downside of using startups is that there is no quick & easy way to reset all of the systems to scan. To reactivate the systems that were turned off by key selection, you have to either manually edit each to turn back on, or reload your preferred area file once back home with access to a PC. I did not have a GPS at that time, but if one was available, then programming the systems, with their corresponding location & ranges, would automatically activate only the systems in range. Of course, with the database scanners, you can simply use main database, along with a GPS, to handle the details.
