Actions

Freescan Virtual Scanner

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Revision as of 16:31, 4 April 2009 by Ka3jjz (talk | contribs) (updates for version 8)

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To use Freescan's various scanner interfaces;

  1. Select 'Control Scanner' from the scanner pulldown or hit shift-F1 (Figure 1)
  2. The Virtual Control setup panel appears (figure 2). Check to see if the COM settings are correct; if not, click on 'Com Port Setup' and make the necessary adjustments. Please see the Making the connection article for more information. You can hide the main program while in virtual mode by clicking the option
  3. Select which interface you would like to use, and decide on whether you wish to log all your hits. Figures 3, 4 and 5 show examples of the various interfaces


On the IPod(c) interface, the double right arrow and bar causes the scanner to scan upwards through the systems. The double left arrow and bar causes the scanner to scan downwards. 'Menu' acts the same way as if you hit the menu key on the physical scanner. The pause arrow is your hold button, the play arrow is the scan button. When you hit scan while you are already scanning, it will switch in between ID Search and ID Scan.

The Tools Pulldown


  • Enable Logging Turns on the logging function but keeps it hidden. If you have a laptop with a small monitor this may be useful. Otherwise to view the log as it's being built, hit the Open Log Window selection
  • Font Changes the font and colors, dependent on what is available on the PC (figure 1)
  • Jump to Frequency Immediately tune to a given frequency. A semi-VFO like mode
  • Negative Delay (figure 2) This function pauses on a transmission then resumes scanning, regardless of whether other traffic was on that frequency.


The Jump Pulldown

This ability became available in version 2 firmware and later. It allows you to quickly move to different functions without having to use a klunky key combination. Some functions require the user to enter data (codes or frequencies) to initialize the function - see the referenced article for more information. This function is only available for the 396, 396XT, 346, BCT15 and BCD996.

  • Scan Mode Resume Scanning after ending a jumped session
  • Service Scan (figure 1) Searches a number of different services, selected as shown. Note that not all services are available for all scanners; see the Service Search article for more on this topic
  • Custom Search Enables customized searches. See the Custom Search article for more on this topic
  • Close Call Only See the Close Call article for more on this topic
  • Weather (figure 2) See the Wx Alert article for more on this topic
    • Normal Search Searches the 162 Mhz weather frequencies
    • Alert Only Activates when it detects a 1050Hz weather alert tone
    • SAME 1 through SAME 5 Activates when it receives a weather alert signal that includes any FIPS code you have programmed into the specified SAME group.
    • FIPS Search Activates when it receives a weather alert tone on any weather channel, regardless of whether a FIPS code has been programmed
  • Fire Tone Out See the Fire Tone Out article for more on this topic


Logging Functions

 NOTE: Descriptions are for version .7g
  • Linear Displays each hit, one at a time (Figure 1)
  • Review Displays a hit and how many times it was encountered. (Figure 2)
  • Clear Clears the log (Figure 3)
  • Export When this option is clicked, the file dialog (figure 4) is displayed. Data is exported in comma seperated value (.csv) format, suitable for export to Excel and other spreadsheet/word processing programs

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