46
Beyond the Basics
listening to a weather channel
To hear your local forecast and regional weather information,
press
WX
. Your scanner scans through the weather band then
stops within a few seconds on the next available weather
broadcast.
SAME standby mode
The National Weather Service precedes each weather alert
with a digitally encoded SAME (Specifi c Area Message
Encoding) signal, then a 1050 Hz tone. The SAME signal
includes a FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard)
area code, and an event code that corresponds with the
type of alert being sent. You can confi gure your scanner to
operate in SAME Standby mode, where it monitors a selected
weather radio station for SAME alerts for areas you specify.
You can program your scanner with up to 10 FIPS codes for
the areas you desire. The National Weather Service maintains
a current list of FIPS codes at
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/
.
To confi gure your scanner for SAME Standby mode, follow
these steps:
1. Press
WX
until you identify the weather station with the
strongest signal for your location.
2. Press
FUNC
, and then
PGM
to access the FIPS code entry
table.
3. Use the
e
or
d
keys to select the desired FIPS code
storage location.
4. Use the numeric keys to enter the desired FIPS code,
and then press
ENT
to store the code. Press
TEXT
to label
the code entry with an alphanumeric text table if desired.
Repeat this process for all the FIPS codes that you wish to
store.
5. Press
L/OUT
to lock out or enable specifi c FIPS entries.