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LISTENING TO THE WEATHER BAND
Your scanner incorporates weather alert as one of its features and is an ex-
tremely sensitive high quality receiver on the weather frequencies. However,
the included flex antenna is optimized for general purpose scanning. If you use
this scanner as your only means for receiving weather alerts, please check to
be sure you are receiving a clear signal on the flex antenna or switch to an
external antenna that gives you clear reception of a local NOAA weather broad-
cast.
The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has allocated channels for
use by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Regula-
tory agencies in other countries have also allocated channels for use by their
weather reporting authorities.
NOAA and your local weather reporting authority broadcast your local forecast
and regional weather information on one or more of these channels.
Listening to a Weather Channel
To hear your local forecast and regional weather information, press
WX
.
WEAthEr
appears for about 2 seconds, then the scanner starts searching the weather
bank.
To stop searching the channels, press
PSE
.
SRCH
disappears and
MAN
ap-
pears.
To change the channel manually, press or .
To search through the weather bank again, press
PSE
.
MAN
disappears and
SRCH
appears. To change the searching direction, press or .
SAME Standby Mode
The National Weather Service precedes each weather alert with a digitally en-
coded SAME (Specific 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 configure 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 7 FIPS codes for the areas you de-
sire. The National Weather Service maintains a current list of FIPS codes at
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/.
To configure your scanner for SAME Standby mode, follow these steps:
1. Press
WX
.
2. Press
PGM
to access the FIPS code entry table.
3. Use or keys to select the desired FIPS code storage location.
