How to scan trunking systems SAFELY..at last!

[Elroy Jetson]

A lot of people want to know how to use their portable radios to scan trunking systems safely without transmitting anything.

Well, here's how to do it.

What you need is to put channels into the radio that you can't get to, but are still assigned to a zone and channel. Doesn't make sense? Keep reading.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you have an Astro portable radio (XTS or Astro Saber) and you set up the program with MORE than sixteen personalities in any particular zone. It could be 17, it could be 32, it could be any number of personalities the software will support.

Now, if you program this codeplug into the radio with more than 16 personalities in one zone, you can't get to the personalities above 16 via the channel selector knob.
You'd have to have the 'chan' (or 'sub'fleet) menu active in the radio to get to the 17th and higher channels in that zone.

The old LAPD codeplug works on this principle. They've got over 200 personalities but they're all in ONE zone.

Now, if you don't have the 'chan' menu in your radio, you can't ever get to those personalities above 16 in any zone.

So that's a perfectly safe place to hide your trunked personalites. They're in there, they're assigned to a zone and channel, and you can't ever get to them directly so you can't ever transmit on them even by accident.

So if you can't get to them, how do you scan them?

Easy. Just assign those 'hidden channels' to the scan lists that are connected to the channels that are NOT hidden. You can put any channel into a scan list as long as it's assigned to a zone and channel location.

And that's it. Hide them above channel 16 in any zone, and do NOT put the 'chan' menu into the radio, and refer to those channels only in your scan lists.

I haven't tried this on a Jedi portable but it should work on any radio that allows you to assign more than 16 channels to one zone. I can't recall which radios do that except for astros.

Have fun with it. You can now scan safely.

By the way, even on a SmartZone system, the radio won't log in on channels that are being scanned. That'd cause the controller to explode from the data overload.

Elroy

[Rude Dog]

cool!