Gearing up for spring here in north central Illinois and at times will set my 536 up for weather alerts, during inclement weather.
I have 5 counties set up with the SAME codes. The 3 options are Alert Only, SAME 0-4 and ALL FIPS. It has occurred to me that Alert Only and ALL FIPS function are the same in that Alert Only alerts when the tone is heard and ALL FIPS alerts for any county a tone is heard for. Aren't the 2 settings the same thing?
No.
Alert Only will activate the warnings when the scanner hears the alert tone on any NWS frequency it can receive. Depending on your location, and the antenna you're using, you might hear alerts for an area for storms that have already passed your location, It does not use the FIPS codes, just listens for the tone alert on the NOAA weather radio frequencies.
SAME 0-4 would be triggered by an alert on any of the counties you have programmed their FIPS code.If you have not entered a county's FIPS, then you would not hear an alert for that specific county. You would also see the
Event Code that cause the activation (Severe Thunderstorm Tornado, etc.)
ALL FIPS would activate if the scanner receives an alert for
any FIPS code, not just the ones that you have programmed is SAME 0-4. This is roughly the same as
Alert Only, in that is not location specific, the difference being that in addition to the alert activation, you would also see the
Event Code displayed, which tells you what the alert is for, i.e. Severe Thunderstorm, Tornado, Flash Floods, whatever. For Alert Only, you would hear the alert, but the display would not include the event code information.
What I would like to do is just receive an alert anytime ALL/ANY of my programmed counties receive an tone but as I understand I can only set this up through the SAME 0-4 option and am forced to select only 1 of the 5 programmed counties. Can someone help clarify my options here moving forward? Its clear I'm missing something if I believe Alert Only and ALL FIPS is essentially the same setting.
SAME 0-4 will alert for
any county whose FIPS code you have programmed, not just the line (SAME 0, SAME 2, etc) that you try to select.
See
this.
I understand your interest in knowing alerts nearby but may I suggest, if you have a smart phone or tablet, there are lots of weather radar apps that can be set to notify you, and will follow your current location, and will show you storm predicted paths. Also, your cell service is able to go into alert without any app if a storm threatens your immediate location. I use the apps to alert me and my scanner to listen to LEO and fire observations. Just my $.02
Agreed.
If you are using these alert types, then the scanner will
only be scanning the NOAA frequencies. You would not hear anything on your programmed systems. If you want to have an alert for weather, but also normal scanning, then use Weather Priority. That will cause brief interruptions in what you are hearing, but would trigger an alert if it hears the tone. When using an alert type that utilizes the FIPS codes, the scanner is restricted to only weather frequency scanning so that it does not miss the FIPS code for the area & type of alert. If Weather Priority is used, you'll hear normal programmed frequencies being scanned, but the alert only needs to hear the alert tone on the WX frequency. That tone is transmitted for several seconds, so the scanner does not have to exclusively monitor; the timed interval WX Priority checks will catch the tone as it is a sustained tone transmission. For FIPS codes, which are a brief bit of data being transmitted, the scanner has to monitor only the weather frequency, so that it does not miss the codes.
