13
UNDERSTANDING YOUR SCANNER
Once you understand a few simple
terms we use in this manual and famil-
iarize yourself with your scanner’s fea-
tures, you can put the scanner to work
for you. You simply determine the com-
munications you want to hear, then set
the scanner to scan those frequencies.
A frequency is the tuning location of a
station (expressed in kHz or MHz). To
find active frequencies, you can use
the search function to search search
bands, which are preset ranges of fre-
quencies. When you find a frequency,
you can store it into a permanent
memory location called a channel,
which is grouped with other channels
in your scanner’s service search
banks and PRIVATE bank. You can
then scan these channels. Each time
the scanner finds an active frequency,
it stays there until the transmission
ends.
BANKS
Service Search Banks
The FCC (Federal Communications
Commission) allocates frequency
ranges for the exclusive use of public
service agencies such as police de-
partments, fire departments, the U.S.
Coast Guard, the Federal Aviation Ad-
ministration (FAA), and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra-
tion (NOAA).
Many of the frequencies used by
these agencies are grouped into this
scanner’s service search banks, so
you can easily scan the frequencies
typically used by a particular agency.
Your scanner has the following ser-
vice search banks.
• POLICE (contains 739 preset fre-
quencies)
• FIRE/EMG (contains 197 preset
frequencies)
• MARINE (contains 90 preset fre-
quencies)
• AIR (contains 1,160 preset fre-
quencies)
Your scanner also has 7 preset
weather frequencies.
You can scan through any service
search bank simply by pressing that
bank’s button, or the weather frequen-
cies by pressing
WX
. For example, if
you want to scan frequencies where
you are likely to hear police calls,
press
POLICE
.
Notes:
• You cannot use the
SEARCH
key
to search for new frequencies in
the service search banks.
• You cannot change or clear any of
the preset frequencies in the ser-
vice search banks, but you can
store frequencies into channels in
the POLICE and FIRE/EMG ser-
vice search banks (see “Chan-
nels” on Page 14).
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