TRX Search Improvement and UK Features

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woodpecker

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Hey Whistler,

How about improving the search functionality on the TRX models, having only a single limit range with your pre-defined step size and mode is awful, why not have search objects so user defined ranges can be searched, as listed as a feature in the manual!

You expect us to buy your scanners here in the UK but you've made no effort to make these scanners much use here, the service searches are a joke, they are all US based, the amateur bands are wrong, the railroad, public safety, CB, FRS/GMRS/MURS are no good here, why not allow these to be user defined?
 

Machria

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Hey Whistler,

How about improving the search functionality on the TRX models, having only a single limit range with your pre-defined step size and mode is awful, why not have search objects so user defined ranges can be searched, as listed as a feature in the manual!

You expect us to buy your scanners here in the UK but you've made no effort to make these scanners much use here, the service searches are a joke, they are all US based, the amateur bands are wrong, the railroad, public safety, CB, FRS/GMRS/MURS are no good here, why not allow these to be user defined?

That's a great suggestion for expanding the Limit Search functionality. I've sent a list of "suggested uprades" to Whistlers suggestion box, I've just added this one to my list and will resend. Thanks.

I had 9 items on my list, and they did one of them already, the "Text search" function.
 

racingfan360

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Dec 19, 2005
Messages
1,158
Hey Whistler,
How about improving the search functionality on the TRX models, having only a single limit range with your pre-defined step size and mode is awful, why not have search objects so user defined ranges can be searched, as listed as a feature in the manual!

Agreed.....as it stands, the TRX models' features are much more biased towards scanning channels (ie you know what the frequency/operator is, and you've programmed them in already). It's still lacking behind most other modern (ie post circa 1985) scanners for search features.

The other feature that would be pretty key here is a maximum hold time (ie the search would automatically advance to the next frequency after this hold time has expired). It makes band searching very manually intensive, having to advance the search every time it hits.
 

pyeman99

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Messages
121
Location
Redruth UK
Agreed.....as it stands, the TRX models' features are much more biased towards scanning channels (ie you know what the frequency/operator is, and you've programmed them in already). It's still lacking behind most other modern (ie post circa 1985) scanners for search features.

The other feature that would be pretty key here is a maximum hold time (ie the search would automatically advance to the next frequency after this hold time has expired). It makes band searching very manually intensive, having to advance the search every time it hits.
I was told by Whistler to address any improvement comments via the UK Facebook page "Whistler scanner users UK". Which is run by the UK importer Moonraker. It makes things a little hard when we don't know what feedback is being sent on to Whistler & if this feedback is correct.Like this forum it needs to be feedback in both directions.I don't think this is being an unresonable request.It would help Whistler to sell more radio's too, when the radio is perfected.
 

Mike_G_D

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I am in the US but have long wished GRE (now Whistler) would just give up on the whole pre-programmed "band plan" approach altogether and let users define search parameters including step sizes and modes as desired! Many other scanner/receiver brands and models do this and it would really avoid a lot of confusion and difficulty for a lot of users.

One problem, I think, is that the US so-called "band plans" as defined by the US FCC can and does change over time and can be subject to special considerations wherein there are occasional exceptions. Not only that, I think there is the possibility of errors and inaccuracies both directly from government documents and via translation problems from English that may cause problems for the designers and programmers.

My suggestions:

1) Omit hard coded bandplans based on US FCC structures.

2) Allow users to set step size and modes independently for both TUNE and SEARCH modes.

3) Have a "default" step size and mode which is user changeable preferably with separate and independent entries for TUNE and SEARCH modes.

4) Allow the "Service Search" functions to be user modifiable as to mode, step size, and frequency band limits. Have "defaults" which the scanner will revert to when reset preferably according to country of intended use.

5) If at all possible, allow users to set a preset series of step sizes based on a smallest common limit (presumably, what the VCO will allow). For most of the world, this would be 1.5625kHz; multiples of this accommodate sizes such as 3.125kHz, 6.25kHz, 12.5kHz, 25kHz, etc. In the US this works for most of our government bands, marine band, and the UHF bands. The US would also need a 1.25kHz starting point to allow step sizes such as 2.5kHz, 5kHz, 7.5kHz, 15kHz, 20kHz, etc. to accommodate our civilian VHF bands and Ham bands. A special case would be for the VHF civilian air band which would need to have either 8.33333kHz or 25kHz selectable or just make it 8.33333kHz (one third of 25kHz).

In my personal opinion, all modern receivers and scanner equipment with scanning and search capability should incorporate this methodology.

-Mike
 

pyeman99

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Joined
Mar 17, 2005
Messages
121
Location
Redruth UK
I am in the US but have long wished GRE (now Whistler) would just give up on the whole pre-programmed "band plan" approach altogether and let users define search parameters including step sizes and modes as desired! Many other scanner/receiver brands and models do this and it would really avoid a lot of confusion and difficulty for a lot of users.

One problem, I think, is that the US so-called "band plans" as defined by the US FCC can and does change over time and can be subject to special considerations wherein there are occasional exceptions. Not only that, I think there is the possibility of errors and inaccuracies both directly from government documents and via translation problems from English that may cause problems for the designers and programmers.

My suggestions:

1) Omit hard coded bandplans based on US FCC structures.

2) Allow users to set step size and modes independently for both TUNE and SEARCH modes.

3) Have a "default" step size and mode which is user changeable preferably with separate and independent entries for TUNE and SEARCH modes.

4) Allow the "Service Search" functions to be user modifiable as to mode, step size, and frequency band limits. Have "defaults" which the scanner will revert to when reset preferably according to country of intended use.

5) If at all possible, allow users to set a preset series of step sizes based on a smallest common limit (presumably, what the VCO will allow). For most of the world, this would be 1.5625kHz; multiples of this accommodate sizes such as 3.125kHz, 6.25kHz, 12.5kHz, 25kHz, etc. In the US this works for most of our government bands, marine band, and the UHF bands. The US would also need a 1.25kHz starting point to allow step sizes such as 2.5kHz, 5kHz, 7.5kHz, 15kHz, 20kHz, etc. to accommodate our civilian VHF bands and Ham bands. A special case would be for the VHF civilian air band which would need to have either 8.33333kHz or 25kHz selectable or just make it 8.33333kHz (one third of 25kHz).

In my personal opinion, all modern receivers and scanner equipment with scanning and search capability should incorporate this methodology.

-Mike
You some it up perfectly, yes that is what we need.Lets hope someone is listening.Hi.
 

AA6IO

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Cerritos, CA (LA County)
I own the TRX-1 and 2, which are decent scanners, especially NXDN, while waiting to see what Uniden does to their x36HPs regarding NXDN. But the TRXs are useless for searching IMHO even here in the United States. The recent Unidens, including my 436HP and 536HP, are much better with regard to search function and selecting just about any parameter you want.
 

Machria

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Messages
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Location
Long Island, NY
The other feature that would be pretty key here is a maximum hold time (ie the search would automatically advance to the next frequency after this hold time has expired). It makes band searching very manually intensive, having to advance the search every time it hits.

I like that idea also, ADDED to my list to be sent to Whistler. Thanks...

I was told by Whistler to address any improvement comments via the UK Facebook page "Whistler scanner users UK". Which is run by the UK importer Moonraker. It makes things a little hard when we don't know what feedback is being sent on to Whistler & if this feedback is correct.Like this forum it needs to be feedback in both directions.I don't think this is being an unresonable request.It would help Whistler to sell more radio's too, when the radio is perfected.

There is a sticky thread at the top of this forum, in it Whistler asked for suggestions to be sent to: scannersuggestions@whistlergroup.com

I've sent several suggestions to it, and received a response back pretty quickly. Not only that, they did one of my suggestions (text search) within a week or two! They may have already been working on that, but still, they ARE listening and want to improve the TRX for us. So far, they are doing an excellent job.

My suggestions:

1) Omit hard coded bandplans based on US FCC structures.

2) Allow users to set step size and modes independently for both TUNE and SEARCH modes.

3) Have a "default" step size and mode which is user changeable preferably with separate and independent entries for TUNE and SEARCH modes.

4) Allow the "Service Search" functions to be user modifiable as to mode, step size, and frequency band limits. Have "defaults" which the scanner will revert to when reset preferably according to country of intended use.

5) If at all possible, allow users to set a preset series of step sizes based on a smallest common limit (presumably, what the VCO will allow). For most of the world, this would be 1.5625kHz; multiples of this accommodate sizes such as 3.125kHz, 6.25kHz, 12.5kHz, 25kHz, etc. In the US this works for most of our government bands, marine band, and the UHF bands. The US would also need a 1.25kHz starting point to allow step sizes such as 2.5kHz, 5kHz, 7.5kHz, 15kHz, 20kHz, etc. to accommodate our civilian VHF bands and Ham bands. A special case would be for the VHF civilian air band which would need to have either 8.33333kHz or 25kHz selectable or just make it 8.33333kHz (one third of 25kHz).

Ok, I'm going to go waaaaay out on a limb here and say I "think" you may want the ability to edit the current hardcoded bandplan, right?? :D

Got it! It's already on my list and will be sent to Whistler. :wink:


You some it up perfectly, yes that is what we need.Lets hope someone is listening.Hi.

As mentioned above, they sure are! And I can't say Uniden EVER answered any of my emails, applied any of my suggestions, or even acknowledged receiving them. There loss, I now am a Whistler fan.

There's an old saying: It takes YEARS to gain a new customer, but it takes minutes to loose them.
 

milcom_chaser

Member
Joined
Jul 4, 2010
Messages
979
I am in the US but have long wished GRE (now Whistler) would just give up on the whole pre-programmed "band plan" approach altogether and let users define search parameters including step sizes and modes as desired! Many other scanner/receiver brands and models do this and it would really avoid a lot of confusion and difficulty for a lot of users.

One problem, I think, is that the US so-called "band plans" as defined by the US FCC can and does change over time and can be subject to special considerations wherein there are occasional exceptions. Not only that, I think there is the possibility of errors and inaccuracies both directly from government documents and via translation problems from English that may cause problems for the designers and programmers.

My suggestions:

1) Omit hard coded bandplans based on US FCC structures.

2) Allow users to set step size and modes independently for both TUNE and SEARCH modes.

3) Have a "default" step size and mode which is user changeable preferably with separate and independent entries for TUNE and SEARCH modes.

4) Allow the "Service Search" functions to be user modifiable as to mode, step size, and frequency band limits. Have "defaults" which the scanner will revert to when reset preferably according to country of intended use.

5) If at all possible, allow users to set a preset series of step sizes based on a smallest common limit (presumably, what the VCO will allow). For most of the world, this would be 1.5625kHz; multiples of this accommodate sizes such as 3.125kHz, 6.25kHz, 12.5kHz, 25kHz, etc. In the US this works for most of our government bands, marine band, and the UHF bands. The US would also need a 1.25kHz starting point to allow step sizes such as 2.5kHz, 5kHz, 7.5kHz, 15kHz, 20kHz, etc. to accommodate our civilian VHF bands and Ham bands. A special case would be for the VHF civilian air band which would need to have either 8.33333kHz or 25kHz selectable or just make it 8.33333kHz (one third of 25kHz).

In my personal opinion, all modern receivers and scanner equipment with scanning and search capability should incorporate this methodology.

-Mike

You need to cut and paste what you wrote here, minus making the aircraft band 8.333Khz, (leave it at 25Khz) and email to: scannersuggestions@whistlergroup.com
 

Mike_G_D

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Messages
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Location
Vista, CA
You need to cut and paste what you wrote here, minus making the aircraft band 8.333Khz, (leave it at 25Khz) and email to: scannersuggestions@whistlergroup.com

As I understand it, there has been a change to accommodate more channels within the civilian air band throughout the world just as in the rest of the LMR bands. The difference between what was done within the air band and what was done for the LMR bands is an odd versus even fractional division. They took the original 25kHz spaced channels and paired them down to 8.33333kHz spacing (1/3rd 25kHz or three times as many channels; unlike the rest of the land mobile allocations the air band used an odd numbered fractional methodology). I believe I have heard that this is already being employed in some parts of the world but not yet in the US. Anyway, I see no problem defaulting to 8.33333kHz spacing within the civilian air band as that will accommodate our "familiar" 25kHz channels. It is not a multiple of the two base "core" steps of 1.5625kHz or 1.25kHz which are based on even numbered multipliers for the rest of the standard step sizes but it could simply be added as a discrete step size option. And, assuming that the Whistler powers-that-be choose to implement some or all of my suggestions then simply adding one more extra step size of 8.33333kHz (which is, again, merely 25kHz divided by three) seems a logical triviality. IF (and, yes, I am very well aware of the importance of said "IF") the synthesizer is capable of 1.25kHz and 1.5625kHz step increments, then accommodating 8.33333kHz should not pose an especially intractable problem even if a special case.

In fact, if the TRX's are like my old GRE units they should already have 8.333kHz steps in the civilian air band (I am not sure how many decimal places past the decimal point to carry the 1/3rd to so chose on my own to go to 5 above figuring that the reader would understand the rounding point is a relatively minor matter in the fuller course of this discussion; I am pretty sure that "out to three" is fine given practical synthesizer and IF filter design).
 
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milcom_chaser

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Jul 4, 2010
Messages
979
As I understand it, there has been a change to accommodate more channels within the civilian air band throughout the world just as in the rest of the LMR bands. The difference between what was done within the air band and what was done for the LMR bands is an odd versus even fractional division. They took the original 25kHz spaced channels and paired them down to 8.33333kHz spacing (1/3rd 25kHz or three times as many channels; unlike the rest of the land mobile allocations the air band used an odd numbered fractional methodology). I believe I have heard that this is already being employed in some parts of the world but not yet in the US. Anyway, I see no problem defaulting to 8.33333kHz spacing within the civilian air band as that will accommodate our "familiar" 25kHz channels. It is not a multiple of the two base "core" steps of 1.5625kHz or 1.25kHz which are based on even numbered multipliers for the rest of the standard step sizes but it could simply be added as a discrete step size option. And, assuming that the Whistler powers-that-be choose to implement some or all of my suggestions then simply adding one more extra step size of 8.33333kHz (which is, again, merely 25kHz divided by three) seems a logical triviality. IF (and, yes, I am very well aware of the importance of said "IF") the synthesizer is capable of 1.25kHz and 1.5625kHz step increments, then accommodating 8.33333kHz should not pose an especially intractable problem even if a special case.

In fact, if the TRX's are like my old GRE units they should already have 8.333kHz steps in the civilian air band (I am not sure how many decimal places past the decimal point to carry the 1/3rd to so chose on my own to go to 5 above figuring that the reader would understand the rounding point is a relatively minor matter in the fuller course of this discussion; I am pretty sure that "out to three" is fine given practical synthesizer and IF filter design).



8.333Khz came from "EuroControl" out of a need for more channels in the civil aviation band as you mentioned. It did not originate here in the states, it was a Europe issue.
I suggested to Whistler they move that spacing over to the UK bandplan, and make the USA
Bandplan 25Khz. It takes way too long to search at 8.333Khz, and cripples the radio. A high end scanner should give the choice of stepsize and mode over to the user...
 

Mike_G_D

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Messages
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8.333Khz came from "EuroControl" out of a need for more channels in the civil aviation band as you mentioned. It did not originate here in the states, it was a Europe issue.
I suggested to Whistler they move that spacing over to the UK bandplan, and make the USA
Bandplan 25Khz. It takes way too long to search at 8.333Khz, and cripples the radio. A high end scanner should give the choice of stepsize and mode over to the user...

I don't care where it originated, personally, it's out there and being used on the planet in some fashion or other. I choose maximum flexibility regardless of where the radio might physically be on the planet and maximum user flexibility and control. But, ok, even going down your road, simply make it a choice just as I have been saying! My primary point is NO MORE FIXED FREAKING BANDPLANS based on subject-to-change-and-subject-to-error government documentation, US, UK, Outer Flippin' Mongolia or wherever!
 

ben-scan

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Joined
Jan 19, 2008
Messages
17
I encourage everyone who also faces these problems to e-mail them to whistler! I just bought this scanner and it's just crazy not being able to change the steps. Here in the Netherlands none of the band plans are a hundred percent correct.
 
Joined
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Messages
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As European owner of a TRX-1 i'm happy with the overall performance.
Whistler is doing a great job listening to its consumers and giving us updates.
A flexible step size and more than 1 search band (linked search) would make the TRX-1 almost perfect.

However there are some other things to consider in a next model:
• Display scratches way too fast.
• Paint on edges of rubber buttons is wearing off already after a few months of use
• Case is to bulky, especially with the the rubber protection its a bit wide to hold comfortable in the hand
• Really needs a volume and/or rotary encoder on top instead of a squelch knob
• Not really a "sexy looking" radio scanner; needs a modern design ;-)
 
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milcom_chaser

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Joined
Jul 4, 2010
Messages
979
I am in the US but have long wished GRE (now Whistler) would just give up on the whole pre-programmed "band plan" approach altogether and let users define search parameters including step sizes and modes as desired! Many other scanner/receiver brands and models do this and it would really avoid a lot of confusion and difficulty for a lot of users.

One problem, I think, is that the US so-called "band plans" as defined by the US FCC can and does change over time and can be subject to special considerations wherein there are occasional exceptions. Not only that, I think there is the possibility of errors and inaccuracies both directly from government documents and via translation problems from English that may cause problems for the designers and programmers.

My suggestions:

1) Omit hard coded bandplans based on US FCC structures.

2) Allow users to set step size and modes independently for both TUNE and SEARCH modes.

3) Have a "default" step size and mode which is user changeable preferably with separate and independent entries for TUNE and SEARCH modes.

4) Allow the "Service Search" functions to be user modifiable as to mode, step size, and frequency band limits. Have "defaults" which the scanner will revert to when reset preferably according to country of intended use.

5) If at all possible, allow users to set a preset series of step sizes based on a smallest common limit (presumably, what the VCO will allow). For most of the world, this would be 1.5625kHz; multiples of this accommodate sizes such as 3.125kHz, 6.25kHz, 12.5kHz, 25kHz, etc. In the US this works for most of our government bands, marine band, and the UHF bands. The US would also need a 1.25kHz starting point to allow step sizes such as 2.5kHz, 5kHz, 7.5kHz, 15kHz, 20kHz, etc. to accommodate our civilian VHF bands and Ham bands. A special case would be for the VHF civilian air band which would need to have either 8.33333kHz or 25kHz selectable or just make it 8.33333kHz (one third of 25kHz).

In my personal opinion, all modern receivers and scanner equipment with scanning and search capability should incorporate this methodology.

-Mike


Yes, however civilian aircraft band needs to be selectable! Just make all bands user selectable...
 

BrianG61UK

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Nov 13, 2016
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Hi guys -
We are definitely listening and we log all of the suggestions as well as watch the Facebook pages. Please do send your suggestions to scannersuggestions@whistlergroup.com

Be sure to put UK in the subject! THANKS! WW

If you want us in the UK to use that Facebook page you should make them be a bit more friendly. I was more or less hounded out of that group for correcting people when they gave incorrect answers. You know daft things like saying somebody should check which COM port their scanner appeared on when they reported problems with sending frequencies to it from EZ-Scan (something that doesn't use the COM port). They don't seem to want somebody who knows, just someone to agree with them that it's all too complicated and maybe they should try a Uniden next time.
 

g6fgy

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Messages
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London, UK
Drop the pre-defined libraries - which are useless in the uk, and provide instead user based import/export functions. I appreciate that the current situation is to do with the tie-in with RR database, but as it stands it adds no value to your users outside the USA/Canada.
 
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