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Understanding Scanning
16
Understanding Scanning
Understanding Scanning This section provides you
with background on how scanning works. You don’t
really need to know all of this to use your scanner, but
some background knowledge will help you get the
most from your UBCD396T.
Your scanner’s memory is organized in an
architecture called
memory. This type of memory is organized differently
and more efficiently than the bank/channel
architecture used by traditional scanners. Dynamic
Allocated design matches how radio systems actually
work much more closely, making it easier to program
and use your scanner and determine how much
memory you have used and how much you have left.
Instead of being organized into separate banks and
channels, your scanner’s memory is contained in a
pool. You simply use as much memory as you need in
the pool to store as many frequencies, talk group ID’s,
and alpha tags as you need. No memory space is
wasted, and you can tell at a glance how much
memory you have used and how much remains.
With a traditional scanner, when you program it to
track a trunked system, you must first program the
frequencies. Since you can only program one trunking
system per bank in a traditional scanner, if there were
(for example) 30 frequencies, the remaining channels
in the bank are not used and therefore wasted. Also,
since some trunked systems might have hundreds of
talk groups, you would have had to enter those types
of systems into multiple banks in order to monitor and
track all the ID’s.
Unlike standard AM or FM radio stations, most two-
way communications do not transmit continuously.
Your UBCD396T scans programmed channels until it
finds an active frequency, then stops on that
frequency and remains on that channel as long as the
transmission continues. When the transmission ends,
the scanning cycle resumes until the scanner receives
another transmission.
Understanding the Scanner’s Memory
What is Scanning?
Dynamic Allocated Channel