Uniden... To hold or not to hold, that is the question...

[NUGEN]

I have programmed countless Uniden scanners and I've noticed specifically for the Philadelphia P25 system Fire, Medic, and Citywide J, T, M will come across Zone 1 and Zone 2.

When doing a 396T and 996T, the scan lists are separate unlike the XT models in ARC-XT. I will double up the talk groups for Medic,Fire,and Citywide on Zone 1 and 2. I always recommend the customer leaves the scanner on "scan" mode when specifically requesting to hear Fire or Medic, since they play on 1 and 2. I've had a few people complain they miss stuff and say they pickup more chatter when leaving the scanner on "hold" mode on a specific Talkgroup rather then scan mode. I'm curious as to what others think and what success stories you have.

 

[Blackink]

My advice, if you want to hear everything, is to make sure you have multiple scanners. If you have just one scanner and you put it on "hold" so you won't miss anything on a specific channel, you're sure as heck going to miss something on another channel.

I know because I push the hold button alot when something comes across my scanner that interests me.
I've got to be missing some transmissions when I do that cause I only have one scanner.......sigh!

 

[policefreak]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2.2; en-us; VM670 Build/FRG83G) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

Yea I can pick up philly on only one scanner connected to a yagi until I get a splitter. Basically I'm trying out different setups but what seems to work best is monitor zone 1 medic and fire bands only. Then zone 2 I monitor central district and t-band only. If there's an accident or major incident in another district I may listen to that district for a time. I still miss things but it works. My other issue is monitoring so far outside philly some freqs just don't come in well. So its actually to my advantage to have the fire bands active on both zones for that reason. But I miss more that way.

 

[policefreak]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2.2; en-us; VM670 Build/FRG83G) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

Another idea is if you're monitoring a specific part of the city like South Philly, Northeast, or Center City then you can just activate the fire and medic band for that response area on Zone 1. You still may hear some crossover for jobs right on the line or for apparatus coming from the other side of town but that would cut out some unwanted traffic.