Right Way to Program Your Scanner - Pt 1

Note: In this first of a two part article, I will go over the best way to program conventional frequencies into your scanner and cover the programming of a trunking system in part two.

A Common Programming Mistake

Two common mistakes I’ve seen scanner listeners do is programming all their frequencies in one or two banks until they’re full and monitoring every frequency of every police and/or fire department they have programmed in their scanner all at once! 

This is the wrong way to monitor. Why? Well, if you’re monitoring everything at once, your scanner will stop on every transmission. By the time the scanner cycles back to your local area frequencies, you may have missed a critical call near you - this is especially true if you live in a populated area with lots of radio traffic continuously going on. 

The correct way is to monitor what is going on in the area you are in at the time. For example, if I’m at home, I want to know what is going on around me – not what’s going on a city or two away so I would only monitor my local police and fire department. 

If something major happens on the city’s borderline or a pursuit is coming into my area from a neighboring agency, I will hear about it over my local area’s dispatch. If I’m out traveling, then I monitor the area I am in at the time.

Programming Conventional Channels & Banks

Since channels can be locked out and channel banks turned on & off, the key is to program frequencies into channels banks that can be used to your advantage. Frequencies for a particular use or agency should be stored together in one bank. 

You could put the local police department in one bank and the fire department in another bank and so on. For example, let’s say you have a 200-channel scanner, most likely, this scanner would be divided into 10 banks containing 20-channels each. 

You could then program frequencies for a particular use in each bank such as I have done below: 

·         Bank 01 – Covina PD (My Local PD, 5 frequencies)

·         Bank 02 – LA County Fire (My Local FD, 10+ frequencies)

·         Bank 03 – West Covina PD/FD (Neighboring PD to the South, 4 frequencies) 

·         Bank 04 – Baldwin Park PD (Neighboring PD to the West, 2 frequencies)

·         Bank 05 – Azusa PD/Glendora PD (Neighboring PD’s to the North, 4 frequencies)

·         Bank 06 – Los Angeles County Sheriff (Neighboring PD to the East, 14 frequencies) 

·         Bank 07 – Local Highway Patrol Frequencies (2 stations, 4 frequencies)

·         Bank 08 – LA City Fire (10+ frequencies)

·         Bank 09 – News Media Frequencies (4 news channels, 10+ frequencies)

·         Bank 10 – San Bernardino County’s Valley Trunk Radio System

Note: Bank 10 is a trunked radio system and would not apply to a conventional scanner.

Turning Channel Banks On or Off 

You can turn banks on and off at the touch of a button. In the example above, if I only want to monitor my local police and fire department, I would leave banks 1 and 2 on and turn off banks 3 through 10. 

Now, let’s say I hear of a police chase going on in West Covina (neighboring city) over my local police channel. I could simply turn on bank 3 and manually select West Covina’s dispatch to listen in or simply turn banks 1 and 2 off and just monitor bank 3. 

Now, let’s say I have to go to San Dimas on a business heron. I simply turn on bank 6 and I’m in on what’s going on in San Dimas. Same goes for traveling on the highway, I turn on bank 7 (Highway Patrol) and I’m good to go.  

Note: Keep in mind that some large agencies may require more than one bank.

This is the end of part one. In part two, I will go over the best way to program a trunking system in to your scanner.