EQUIPMENT AND ACCESSORIES FOR YOUR
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1. 500 820 840 860 880 900 920 940 960 FREQUENCY MHZ the monster megachannel trunked systems in California and other urban areas Our PRO 92 tracked local systems well though as mentioned in the user manual the wrong talk group labels flashed occasionally on weak signals It follows conversations when held on achosen talk group but it missed a few call backs in the EDACS system The scan speed is acceptable Will the good performance scale up when monitoring huge trunked systems Will the PRO 92 miss more call backs We cannot answer this question with only small to me dium sized trunked systems nearby E Overall It s gratifying to see another manufacturer GRE offer a trunking scanner The PRO 92 is anything but a simple first offering Itis a top quality feature rich model with almost every thing one could want except full frequency coverage and auto store during search The PL and DPL squelch should be de signed to function while in manual mode That aside the PRO 92 s instantaneous PL DPL code display is awesome We like being able to use AA batteries in the PRO 92 too RadioMap Transmitter sites in your area are researched and marked on a beautiful 8 1 2 x 11 full color plot See FCC licensed sites from VLF through microwave including police fire cellular phone sites business industrial broadcasters and selected FAA transmitter sites Callsigns frequency assignments and names p2. for standard NiCd cells to about 16 hours You can operate the PRO 92 while recharging though it will take longer for a full charge You can program the PRO 92 with a com puter interface kit not supplied or clone one PRO 92 from another using the cable pro vided E Memory The PRO 92 provides 500 memory chan nels in 10 banks numbered 0 9 Both chan nels and banks are numbered differently from other Radio Shack models The first bank 0 for example contains channels 000 049 the second bank 1 has channels 100 149 As you can see the bank number is used as the first digit of the channel number Each memory channel is programmed with a frequency and what Radio Shack calls a mode The modes are AM FM Motorola Trunked EDACS LTR PL and DL digital PL You can mix combinations of conven MEASUREMENTS RADIO SHACK PRO 92 SCANNER S N 011022 Frequency coverage MHz 29 54 5 10 15 20 25 30 50 100 kHz steps 108 137 AM 12 5 25 50 100 kHz steps 137 174 5 10 15 20 25 30 50 100 kHz steps 380 512 12 5 25 50 100 kHz steps 806 960 cellular omitted 12 5 25 50 100 kHz steps Sensitivity see graphs RF attenuator 20 dB 30 MHz 20 dB 150 MHz 15 dB 450 MHz 21 dB 950 MHz FM modulation acceptance 12 kHz List price 349 99 Tandy Corp Fort Worth TX 76102 Intermediate Frequencies 257 5 21 4 0 455 MHz Image rejection 50 dB 30 MHz 73 dB at
3. 155 MHz 64 dB at 400MHz Audio output power at earphone jack 146 mW 10 distortion into 8 ohms Practical memory scan speed 29 ch sec conventional mode Current consumption at 9 VDC off 0 mA manual 89 mA scan 89 mA full volume 170 mA Battery saver after 5 seconds in Manual Low battery shutdown at 5 89 VDC or less 96 MONITORING TIMES January 2000 tional and trunked frequencies within the same bank but fre quencies for each EDACS trunked system must be pro grammed into their own sepa rate bank PL and DPL are abbrevia tions derived from Motorola s trademarked terms Private Line continuous tone coded squelch or CTCSS and Digital Private Line digital coded squelch The PRO 92 s PL and DPL capabili ties are remarkable because the associated code is detected on a signal and displayed almost instantaneously Each channel may be programmed with a 12 character label which is displayed along with the frequency Each memory bank may have its own text label but bank labels are not displayed while trunking or on channels as signed a PL or DPL code A built in attenuator may be enabled on or off on a per channel basis though we didn t need to use it E Scanning and Searching As you might expect memory banks can be sequentially scanned in any combination We programmed three banks with conven tional AM and FM frequencies three banks with different Motorola trunked systems one bank wi
4. CANNER EQUIPMENT EQUIPMENT AND ACCESSORIES FOR YOUR MONITORING POST Bob Parnass AJ9S parnass megsinet net www megsinet com parnass Radio Shack PRO 92 Portable Multi System Trunking Scanner he Radio Shack PRO 92 is a portable scanner capable of monitoring conven tional Motorola trunked type I II and hybrid Ericsson EDACS trunked and E F Johnson LTR trunked systems Built in Japan it is among the first trunking scanners manu factured by GRE for Radio Shack The PRO 92 is not a general coverage ra dio it tunes the upper portion of the 10 meter ham band and the standard scanner bands as well as the 806 960 MHz range It also functions as a weather alert radio display ing the level and type of alert from NOAA weather station broadcasts within your recep tion area You cannot program specific codes for your location as you can in a Uniden BC278CLT E Power to the People The PRO 92 runs on 9 VDC and its battery scheme is flexible It is supplied with separate trays for 6 rechargeable and nonrechargeable AA cells The latter disconnects the batteries when using an external power source You can power the scanner from 117 VAC using an optional 9 VDC 300 mA power supply Radio Shack 273 1825 fitted with the proper plug Connecting a power source to the side mounted PWR jack charges the inter nal batteries when using the proper holder A current limiter inside the PRO 92 sets the recharge time
5. d sequence Press ing another key lights the display but the lamps cannot be latched on The green back lighting is too dim to illuminate the entire display It is useful in total darkness but our display is often difficult to see during the day unless in a well lighted area The display shows frequencies channel and other indicators Even with 4 lines the PRO 92 s display can only show so much While the PRO 92 is stopped on a signal the first line shows the channel number and other status information For trunked channels the remaining 3 lines show frequency channel label and talk group label E Subtleties The PRO 92 is a complex radio and some aspects of the way it works may not be obvious after a quick reading of the owner s manual You must program EDACS frequencies in the proper order in a separate bank starting with the second memory channel 01 in that bank If you start programming them at the first channel 00 the PRO 92 won t track them properly Some PRO 92 features for example the 2 second rescan delay are implemented for conventional systems and don t function while the PRO 92 is monitoring trunked activity 140 145 150 155 160 165 170 175 FREQUENCY MHZ more sensitive Bank text labels are not displayed for trunked frequencies The 4th line on the display shows talk group information instead The manual states that priority won t work while trunking but pr
6. iority appeared to work while we scanned Motorola and LTR trunked systems That s a bonus The PL and DPL squelch is only effective while scanning in the Closed mode We could find no way to configure the PRO 92 to sit on a single channel with PL or DPL and prevent signals without the proper code from opening the squelch An impractical work around is to lock out or clear all the other channels in the bank then press the Scan key You can lock out talk groups from being scanned but not from being searched this makes searching for new talk groups more time consuming The Uniden TrunkTrackers support mul tiple talk group lists per bank vs one list per bank in the PRO 92 To obtain the same func tionality in the PRO 92 you could program the same trunked system frequencies into sev eral channel banks and program the corre sponding talk group lists differently e g one for police another for fire etc E Performance Our PRO 92 produces clean crisp audio It is sensitive and has excellent image rejection We did hear cellular phone transmissions in the 51 MHz range when driving within 1 4 mile of cellular phone transmitters The PRO 92 and Uniden TrunkTrackers employ different schemes for following trunked conversations and the merits of one method over the other is hotly discussed over the Internet The trunked systems we monitored are comprised of 5 7 channels smaller than January 2000 0 0 400 420 440 460 480
7. rovided Ham radio stations not included You choose the map center location your neighborhood near your office around sports stadiums anywhere within the United States We adjust map coverage for best readability depending on transmitter site density Invaluable to radio professionals and hobl adio interferen Send nearest street intersection and 95 payable to Robert Parnas towers s check for MONITORING TIMES 97
8. th an EDACS trunked system and one bank with a local LTR trunked business sys tem Our PRO 92 scans all those banks in turn There is no apparent delay when our PRO 92 transitions between conventional Motorola trunked or LTR trunked banks however there s a delay of approximately 3 seconds while our PRO 92 is in the EDACS bank For trunking one can program up to 100 talk group IDs in each ofthe 10 banks You can lock out talk groups from these lists and con versations in these groups won t be scanned but you cannot lock them out while searching i e scanning in the Open mode While scanning trunked systems you can instruct the PRO 92 to camp out or hold on a particular talk group It will scan all the trunked frequencies in the current bank stop ping only on conversations in that talk group less ri PRO 92 VHF NFM SENSITIVITY 12 dB SINAD 3 KHZ DEVIATION Serial 011022 less PRO 92 UHF NFM SENSITIVITY sensitive 12 dB SINAD 3 KHZ DEVIATION Serial 011022 SENSITIVITY uV SENSITIVITY uV 0 0 25 30 35 40 45 50 more sensitive The PRO 92 supports a search with 10 pairs of frequency limits and you can search multiple ranges sequentially Up to 50 fre quencies may be locked out in each bank There is no auto store feature E Multi Line Display The PRO 92 is built with a 4 line dot matrix liquid crystal display One may adjust the contrast through a keypa
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