It's really unfortunate that Uniden won't address this issue. None of their scanners have ever tracked patches on P25 systems. It's a P25 control channel message issue, Uniden scanners fail to follow patches on both Phase I and Phase II systems.
GRE took care of this with a firmware update on their PSR-500/600 and PRO-106/197. The PSR-800 follows P25 patch traffic, too.
I can't understand why more people don't complain about this lack of such an important feature. Uniden scanners are really inferior if you're trying to only listen to a specific district talkgroup that can be randomly patched to others when the dispatcher takes a bathroom break.
Many police agencies air their high priority "hot" calls using multi-select which is a short-lived patch of several of their channels. Unless you're scanning all of the talkgroups they might possibly include in one of those patches (and it could be hundreds of possible talkgroups if it's a Harris P25 system), you could miss that call. I suspect many scanner users have no idea they may be missing traffic like this.
The highway patrol around here runs patched talkgroups full-time, and the patches can change at any time depending on dispatcher staffing and how busy they are. So if you're stuck with a Uniden, you have to leave all their talkgroups unlocked and start listening for the callsigns of the troopers in the area you're interested in, and then temporarily lock out the rest--and then hope they don't change the patch on you. When you stop hearing the troop you're interested in, you have to unlock all the talkgroups again, and start over.
And a large city PD (with 6 districts, each having their own dispatch TG) here is moving toward a Harris P25 system from an EDACS system. Most recent model scanners (including the Unidens) do track the EDACS patches, so people can listen to their desired district(s) pretty seamlessly. Once they go P25, those stuck with the Unidens will be in for a rude awakening when they find they'll have to leave the whole "system-assigned patch TG range" unlocked at all times if they want to be sure they'll continue to hear their desired district(s) when they get patched to another.
I know I'm not buying another Uniden scanner until they fix this. I encourage others to do the same.
If you've got a GRE-made scanner, or a real radio, just scan the talkgroup you want, and you'll hear the traffic, regardless of what it's patched to. The user hardly even knows it was patched. That's the way it should be!
