of scanners with thousands of memories and complicated architectures) the ability to program your radio
from the keyboard is essential. You will not always have access to a computer with the programming
software and a programming cable so you need to know how to do it on the fly.
The PSR600 keyboard has 34 different buttons. The buttons are organized 4 groups:
The
5 Way Pad
allows one to navigate the curser around the screen in 4 directions (up, down, left and
right) and the center Select key completes the action.
Three
Soft Keys
(F1, F2 and F3) are used to select menu items on the bottom line of the display, directly
above these keys. In some modes the arrow keys from the 5 Way Pad can be used to scroll thru selections
available on these Soft Keys.
Operation Keys
along the right side of the keyboard provide specific or modified commands to the scanner.
These include standard scanner keys like Scan, Manual, Priority, etc. as well as some unique-to-GRE keys
like Tune, FAV and PSE.
The
Numeric Keypad
allows you to enter specific frequencies or talkgroups and other programming
commands to the radio.
The entire keyboard is well backlit and the same light illuminates the display. Press the DIM key and the
backlight scrolls thru 3 levels of brightness (Hi, Lo and off).
Display
The PSR600’s display is roughly the same height as the Uniden BC996XT but slightly wider. On the GRE
radios the portable’s display is identical to that of the corresponding mobiles, the Uniden mobile scanner
displays are wider than their portables. The GRE display has 4 text lines plus the top line, which is reserved
for specific symbols like signal strength, feature status and other items.
The display uses a dot-matrix LCD display, each character is up to 7 dots high and 5 wide, and there are 16
characters per line.
During scanning operations the text lines display the pertinent information about the operation, such as the
frequency, talkgroup ID, Tone Code, Scan List, Mode and other information. What information is listed
where depends on the operational mode currently in place on the radio. The bottom line is often given over
to display the current selections available on the Soft Keys (F1 thru F3).
On the front panel, above the 5 Way Pad is a multi-colored LED light. Remarkably bright, this may be used
to indicate many things, like the use of a specific channel or group of channels, a search hit or almost
anything else. Set it to white and you can just about use it to replace a broken headlight. Used in
conjunction with audible alerts and you can pretty much have any type of activity set to a different alert and
tell at a quick glance what the radio is doing.
Frequency Ranges
The PSR600 receives all of the contemporary scanner bands, from 25 to 54, 108 thru 174, 216 thru 512,
764 thru 960 and 1240 thru 1300 MHz. The cellular frequencies are of course blocked. What the PSR600
does not pick up are some non-traditional bands, such as the FM Broadcast band and the occasionally
interesting 72-76 MHz band. It also does not pick up most of the frequencies assigned to domestic
television broadcast. Even though the new Digital TV mode can not be decoded on any scanners, there are
many wireless mics and occasionally other unusual operations found here.
The PSR600 can hear communications in the AM, FM, NFM and P25 modes as well as decode PL
(CTCSS), DPL (DCS) and NAC (Network Access Codes, used on P25 digital channels). The ability to
swap between FM and NFM will become more important over the next few years, the FCC has mandated
that most communications in the various UHF and UHF scanner bands switch over to narrowband soon.
