What Is Your Favorite/Best Delay Setting

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dcisive

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this is a bit like religion, it seems everyone believes something a bit different. The default is of course 2 seconds. However I've seen many a review where the individual suggested changing the channel scan delay to 4 seconds as there would be much less tendency to miss a follow up transmission. Is this true? Have you all found this to be more so the case, or do you still recommend sticking with the default of 2 seconds. I appreciate your input. Just trying to maximize my results and enjoyment.
 

ofd8001

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Channels that are "important" to me - those I'm most interested in monitoring have a 4 second delay. Those I could care less about are 2 seconds.
 

jonwienke

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If I have no interest in a channel, I turn off its service type or avoid it.

I use a delay setting of 5 seconds. It's the minimum time to ensure that the scanner doesn't resume scanning in the middle of an interesting conversation in most situations.

YMMV
 

Ubbe

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It depends of the channel type. If its a marine, air or frs type of simplex channel I use 10 sec.
If a repeater stays up during the whole conversation I use 1 sec.
If it is a trunked system I use 10 sec. The users here tend to first think through what to say and if they really should respond before pushing their ptt. Some users want to see their busy lamp go out before pushing the ptt.

/Ubbe
 

SOFA_KING

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The last two answers are spot on. Each type of operation has its own delay time. You get to know these habits after a while. And repeaters usually don't need much if the tail on the repeater is long. Then there are half-duplex frequency pairs that drive me crazy. Those need as little delay as possible, but if you are scanning a lot of channels, you're not likely to get replying transmissions. I wonder if priority settings on those channels would work. I might try that.

On one agency that uses a lot of air to ground callouts with two to four second gaps, I found that four second delay has to be it or the scanner would never hear anything else but that one channel.

But what I do know is that the RR Database with only 2 seconds delay is not nearly enough for most situations. You only get tiny bits and pieces. I can't tell you how many times I heard fire tones go out and it scanned off way before the actual dispatch was announced. And if you're driving a car, 2 seconds isn't enough time to find and press hold! I would like to see 5 seconds the default with exceptions being made for half duplex channels and long tail repeater channels.

Phil
 
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pb_lonny

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I have a few channels with a 5 second delay, others I have no delay at all. It depends what traffic they carry and how interested I am in it.
 

troymail

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"Each type of operation has its own delay time"

I have some systems where NO delay (a delay of 0) makes sense -- the responses actually come back on a completely different talkgroup... Actually, on this particular system, some user sets/talkgroups do use the same talkgroup as is "normal" (my opinion) and I just use the default delay of 2 seconds... while other user sets have one talkgroup for the "base" and each mobile unit has it's own separate talkgroup (which I think is really weird but apparently there are reasons for doing this...)
 
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