PRO-2026 100-Channel Mobile Programmable Scanner
(200-0148B) Operation Faxback Doc. # 16902
INITIALIZING/RESETTING THE SCANNER
The scanner might not operate the first time you install and turn it on.
It also might stop operating if the batteries become too low or if the
scanner is dropped or subjected to a physical or electrical shock. If
this happens, follow these steps.
CAUTION: This procedure clears all the information you have programmed
into the scanner. Use this procedure only when you are sure
your scanner is not working properly.
1. Turn off the scanner.
2. While you press and hold down 2 and 9, turn on the scanner.
SETTING THE VOLUME AND SQUELCH
Use SQUELCH to decrease the scanners sensitivity to weak signals. This
allows the scanner to receive only the strongest transmissions.
1. Turn SQUELCH and VOLUME fully counterclockwise.
2. Turn VOLUME clockwise until you hear a hissing stops.
If you want to listen to a weak or distant station, turn SQUELCH
counterclockwise. You might hear hissing between transmissions.
STORING FREQUENCIES INTO CHANNELS
A good reference for active frequencies is Radio Shack's Police Call
Directory Including Fire and Emergency Services. We update this directory
yearly, so be sure to get a current one. Also, refer to "Reception Notes,"
"Searching for Active Frequencies," and "Using the Band Search Keys".
Follow these steps to store a frequency in a channel.
1. Turn VOLUME clockwise to turn on the scanner
2. Press MANUAL, enter the channel number you want to program, and press
PROG. PGM appears on the display and shows that your scanner is in
the programming mode.
3. Use the keypad to enter a frequency.
4. Press ENTER to store the frequency. If you made a mistake in Step 3,
Error appears on the display and the scanner sounds three beeps. To
clear the display, press CLEAR. Then, proceed again from Step 3.
The scanner automatically rounds the entered frequency to the nearest
valid frequency. For example, if you try to enter a frequency of
151.473, your scanner accepts it as 151.475.
5. If you want your scanner to pause after each transmission before
scanning to the next channel, press ./DELAY until DLY appears on the
display. See "Using the Delay Feature."
6. To program more channels, repeat Steps 2 through 5. If you want to
program the next channel in sequence, simply press PROG and repeat
Steps 3 through 5.
SEARCHING FOR ACTIVE FREQUENCIES
Use the following procedure to Search for a transmission. This procedure
is helpful if you do not have a reference to frequencies in your area.
Also, see "Guide to the Action Bands."
Follow these steps to search within a specific range of frequencies.
1. Press PROG.
2. Press LIMIT.
3. Enter the lower limit of the frequency range you want to search.
Then, press ENTER.
4. Press LIMIT.
5. Enter the upper limit of the frequency range. Then, press ENTER.
6. Press DOWN ARROW to Search from the upper limit down to the lower
limit. Or, press UP ARROW to search from the lower limit up to the
upper limit.
7. When the scanner stops on a transmission, you can store that frequency
in the monitor memory by pressing MONITOR. This replaces the
previously stored monitor frequency.
8. To continue the search, press UP ARROW or DOWN ARROW.
NOTE: Press ./DELAY until DLY appears. To make the scanner pause 2
seconds after a transmission before proceeding to the next
frequency. Otherwise, the scanner begins to scan again as soon as
the transmission ends. See "Using the Delay Feature."
USING THE SERVICE SEARCH KEYS
You can scan for police, fire, air, weather, or marine transmissions even
if you do not know the frequencies being used in your area. The scanner
is programmed with all frequency ranges allocated to these services. To
use this feature, press the desired BAND SEARCH key. Then, press UP ARROW
or DOWN ARROW to begin scanning.
When the scanner stops on a transmission, you can store that frequency in
the monitor memory by pressing MONITOR.
To continue the scan, press UP ARROW or DOWN ARROW.
NOTES: The priority and lock-out features do not function in this mode.
The delay feature is programmed band by band in this mode.
The 800 and 900 MHz bands are allocated to trunked services. This
means that the police and fire departments share the frequencies
with other services. The scanner might stop on transmissions by
other services in these bands.
Because there are many different frequency ranges allocated to fire
and police departments, it takes several minutes to search all
frequencies when you scan for these services.
MOVING A FREQUENCY FROM MONITOR MEMORY TO A CHANNEL
To listen to the frequency stored in the monitor memory, press MANUAL, and
press MONITOR.
To copy the frequency from monitor memory to a channel, follow these steps.
1. Press MANUAL, the channel number you want to store the monitor
frequency in, and PROG.
2. Press MONITOR.
3. Press ENTER. The scanner stores the frequency in the selected channel.
4. If you want to return to a frequency Search after this procedure, press
LIMIT, followed by either UP ARROW or DOWN ARROW.
SCANNING THE CHANNELS
To begin scanning the channels, press SCAN. Your scanner scans through all
the channels (except the ones you have locked out) that are contained in
the banks you have turned on. Be sure to read the following sections to
get the full benefit from the special features of your scanner.
USING THE DELAY FEATURE
Many agencies use a two-way radio system that might have a period of two
or more seconds between a query and a reply. To keep from missing a reply,
program a delay on the channels you identify as operating this way.
To program a delay, select the channel and press ./DELAY so that DLY
appears on the display. Now, When your scanner scans through channels, it
pauses for 2 seconds after the completion of each transmission on that
channel before it resumes scanning.
Some Radio systems that operate at 800 MHz and above use a special
"trunked" system. In this system, the transmitter selects an available
frequency each time the operator keys the radio. Therefore, it is
possible for the query to be on one frequency and the reply on another.
To increase the possibility of hearing the full reply, do not set DELAY.
The scanner begins to scan immediately when the first transmission ends.
For immediate scan resume, select the channel and be sure that DLY is not
on the display. If DLY appears on the display, press ./DELAY to turn off
scan delay for that channel.
LOCKING OUT CHANNELS
You can make your scanner scan more efficiently by locking out channels.
Manually select the channel and press L/OUT so that L/O appears on the
display. This is handy for locking out channels that have a continuous
transmission, such as a weather channel, or channels you have not yet
stored frequencies into. You can still listen to a locked-out channel by
manually selecting it.
To remove the lock-out from a channel, manually select the channel and
press L/OUT so that L/O disappears from the display.
NOTE: You can lock out all but one channel in each bank.
To release all the locked-out channels press the L/OUT key for about
3 seconds until the scanner beeps.
TURNING THE BANDS ON AND OFF
You can set the scanner to skip over complete banks of channels.
To turn banks on and off, first press SCAN.
To turn on a bank, press the number key that corresponds to that bank until
the bank indicator (a small bar) appears under the bank number.
The scanner can scan all the channels within that bank (except the ones
that you have locked out).
To turn off a bank, press the number key that corresponds to that bank
until the bank indicator disappears from under the bank number.
The scanner can not scan any of the channels within that bank. You can
annually select any channel in that bank.
NOTE: You can turn off all but one bank.
USING THE PRIORITY FEATURE
The scanner automatically checks for a transmission every 2 seconds on the
channel you designate as the priority channel, even if you are listening
to another channel or scanning. To program a priority channel, press
PROG, the desired channel number, and then PRIORITY.
The priority indicator P appears on the display to show that you set the
scanner to the priority channel.
You can only program one channel as the priority channel. When you program
a new channel as the priority channel, you clear the previous channel you
chose.
NOTE: Channel 1 is automatically designated as the priority channel the
first time you turn on your scanner.
MANUALLY SELECTING A CHANNEL
You can continuously listen to a single channel without scanning. This is
useful if you hear an emergency broadcast on a channel and do not want to
miss any of the details - even though there might be periods of silence -
or if you want to monitor a channel that you have locked out.
To select a channel to listen to, press MANUAL, enter the channel number,
and then press MANUAL again. Or, if your scanner is scanning and has
stopped at the desired channel, press MANUAL one time. Pressing MANUAL
additional times causes your scanner to step through the channels one at a
time.
A GENERAL GUIDE TO SCANNING
BIRDIES
Birdies are frequencies your scanner uses when it operates. These
operating frequencies might interfere with broadcasts on the same
frequencies. If you program one of these frequencies, you hear noise on
that frequency.
If the interference is not severe, you might be able to turn SQUELCH
clockwise to cut out the birdie. The most common birdies to watch for are
listed below.
Birdie Frequencies
31.050 MHz
32,400 MHz
36.225 MHz
41.400 MHz
46.575 MHz
51.750 MHz
RECEPTION NOTES
Reception of the frequencies covered by your scanner is mainly "line of
sight." That means you usually cannot hear stations that are beyond the
horizon.
During the summer months, you might be able to hear stations in the 30-50
MHz range located several hundred or even thousands of miles away. This
is because of summer atmospheric conditions. This type of reception is
unpredictable but often very interesting!
GUIDE TO THE ACTION BANDS
With a little investigation, you can find the active frequencies in your
community. We can give you some general pointers on finding these
frequencies and you can take it from there. Please use caution and common
sense when you hear an emergency call. Never go to the scene of an
emergency. It could be very dangerous.
Find out if there is a local club that monitors your community's
frequencies. Perhaps a local electronics repair shop that works on
equipment similar to your scanner can give you frequencies used by local
services. A volunteer police department or fire department employee can
also be a good source for this information.
As a general rule on VHF, most activity concentrates between 153.785 and
155.98 MHz and between 153.73 and 159.46 MHz. Here you find local
government, police, fire, and most other emergency services. If you are
near major railroad tracks, listen between 160.0 and 161.9 for signals.
In some larger cities, there has been a move to the UHF bands for emergency
services. Here, most of the activity is between 453.025 and 453.95 MHz and
between 456.025 and 459.95 MHz.
In the UHF band, mobile units operate between 456.025 and 459.95 MHz and
between 465.025 and 469.975 MHz. A repeater picks up the mobile units'
transmissions on one frequency, then rebroadcasts (or repeats) the
transmission 5 MHz lower, but at a higher power level, than the mobile
units (that is, 451.025-454.95 MHz and 460.025-464.975 MHz). This means
that if you find an active frequency inside one of the mobile unit's
frequency inside one of the mobile unit's frequency spreads, you can look 5
MHz lower to find the repeater frequency.
A system called trunked radio lets several services use the same set of
frequencies in the 800 MHz band without interference. Several frequencies
are allocated to two or more services (like fire, police, and water
departments). As each service transmits, a separate control signal
activates other radios in the same service, so that only that service hears
the transmission. The frequency is selected as soon as the unit begins to
transmit, and could be any one of the allocated frequencies.
One very useful service is the National Weather Service's continuous
weather broadcasts. These broadcasts contain weather forecasts and data
for the area around the station, plus bulletins on any threatening weather
conditions. These stations use seven frequencies: 162.40, 162.425,
165.450, 162.475, 162.500, 162.525, or 162.55 MHz. In most areas of the
country, you can receive one of these frequencies.
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