Most modern HT radios come with a lot of features. Lets cover the group or block scan. Most HT radios have a lot of memory channels. You might consider entering the frequencies into your radio as geographical blocks if your radio offers this capability This feature allows the operator to scan a portion of the total memory channels. I was taking a short vacation from Placentia to San Luis Obispo the summer of 2017. I had put frequencies into my HT for Orange County, LA County, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. I love to scan the frequencies as I make this long drive. The scan works way better if you make your radio scan only the channel memories where you are located within.
For example, I have a Kenwood TH-F6A that offers 400 memory channels. After I enter the frequencies into this radio, I can long press the MR button and all the stored channels will be scanned. This can be very inefficient. On this particular radio you also have the option to long press the MHz button which will scan the current 50 channels from where you started. Another option is this radio allows you to group link, meaning that two or more groups can be linked together for the scan process, but you need to go into the radio menu to activate this.
You could input all the north Orange County city frequencies together. The south Orange County cities could be in a separate 50 channel range. Riverside could be in another. LA could be in one or more channel groups.
Here is my argument that you might want to consider entering the radio frequencies into 50 memory location groups and make each group a close geographical area.
- Why have your radio scan all 400 channels? This slows down the scan process if you are only concerned with the area you are within.
- It is quite possible to pick up a channel outside your active area. Catalina has a very large coverage area as other well placed repeaters.
The disadvantage of this method is when you might only have way fewer memory frequencies to enter than 50 in that geographical group or you go over the 50, forcing you to link two groups.