Radio Shack PRO-137, Manual

10

11

Headphones and Speakers

For private listening, you can plug headphones 
(not included) into the headphone jack on top 
of your scanner. This automatically disconnects 
the internal speaker. Note that the sound is not 
stereo.  

Listening Safely

To protect your hearing, follow these earphone or 
headphones guidelines:

• Do not listen at extremely high volume 

levels. Extended high-volume listening can 
lead to permanent hearing loss.

• Set the volume to the lowest setting before 

listening. Turn on the scanner, and adjust the 
volume to a comfortable level.

• After you set the volume, do not increase 

it. Over time, your ears adapt to the volume 
level, so a volume level that does not cause 
discomfort might still damage your hearing.

• Even though some earphones/headphones 

let you hear some outside sounds when 
listening at normal volume levels, they still 
can present a traffic hazard.

Understanding Your Scanner

We use a few simple terms in this manual to 
explain the features of the scanner. Familiarize 
yourself with these terms and the scanner’s 
features, and you can put the scanner to work for 
you right away.  

The scanner scans conventional frequencies and 
racing. A 

frequency

, expressed in kHz or MHz, 

is the tuning location of a station. To find active 
frequencies, use the 

search

 function.

Besides searching within a selected frequency 

range, you can also search your scanner’s service 
banks.

Service banks

 are preset groups of 

frequencies categorized by the type of services 
that use those frequencies. For example, many 
amateur radio frequencies are located in the Ham 
service bank.

When you search and find a desired frequency, 
you can store it into a programmable memory 
location called a channel. 

Channels

 are grouped 

into channel-storage banks. Your scanner has 10 
channel-storage banks. Each bank contains 100-
channel sets. So the scanner has 1,000 channels. 
You can 

scan

 the channel storage banks to see if 

there is activity on the frequencies stored there.

Note:

 Search for frequencies to find your 

local frequencies, after you have programmed 
these frequencies, you can scan channels.

Understanding Banks

Service Banks

The scanner is preprogrammed with all the 
frequencies allocated to the Car Band, Marine, 
CB Band, FRS/GMRS/MURS, Fire/Police, Aircraft, 
and Ham Band services. This helps you quickly find 
active frequencies instead of doing a chain search.

Channel Storage Banks

To make it easier to identify and select the 
channels you want to listen to, all the channels 
are divided into 10 banks of 100 channels. Use 
each channel-storage bank to group frequencies, 
such as those for the police department, fire 
department, ambulance services, or aircraft. For 
example, the police department might use four 
frequencies in your town while the fire department 
uses an additional four. You could program the 
four police frequencies starting with Channel 0