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Copyright 2009, Richard Carlson/Scanner Master Corporation
Introduction
GRE has produced scanners for the US market for decades, but they are a new name in the industry here.
How's that? Well, remember the Radio Shack PRO2004, PRO2005 or PRO2006? How about the PRO96 or
its mobile brother PRO2096? These were all built by GRE and sold by Radio Shack. While some scanners
sold by Radio Shack were built by Uniden, most of the big sellers were GRE built.
At the 2007 Dayton Hamvention GRE snuck in a couple of their rumored new line of scanners for direct
sales in the USA. A privileged few (including the author) got to check them out for a few minutes each. It
was apparent immediately that GRE had produced a winner, or better yet, several winners.
What GRE did was introduce three lines of scanners, each line consisting of a handheld and a base/mobile
version. Radios within each line are electronically identical, even to the extent that they can clone to each
other.
After the GRE line of scanners were unveiled to the public and readied for sale Radio Shack announced a
new line of scanners that mysteriously mirrored the specs of some of the GRE's. The Radio Shack PRO106
turned out to be a GRE PSR500 with a rearranged front panel. The Radio Shack PRO197 was a clone of the
PSR600 base/mobile. The PSR300 and 400 radios are closely related to Radio Shacks PRO97, 2055, 163
and 164 scanners.
The three lines are:
Basic
Advanced
Digital
While the Radio Shack and GRE versions of the various scanners are visually and electronically similar in
most respects there is one difference that one must remember, and that is that the firmware updates are not
interchangeable between Radio Shack and GRE versions. Programming files are interchangeable, which
makes sharing files easier.
While the Basic and Advanced lines use conventional programming methods such as defined banks and
channel arrangements, the Digital line uses an entirely different structure called "Object Oriented User
Interface" or more succinctly, "Scannable Objects". Basically what this means is that you program things
(Objects) into your radio and then select the things you want to scan (Scannable Objects). These Scannable
Objects could be regular frequencies, talkgroups on a trunked system or one of several types of searches.
The Advanced line of scanners are fine for many areas if you do not need to monitor digital
communications but want more memory and features than the Basic line provides. The Basic Line is fine if
you only need to monitor a few conventional channels such as aircraft, railroads or local public safety
channels and don't need any advanced features of the Advanced or Digital lines.
Both the Advanced and Digital lines provide large channel capacity, support for several methods of
trunking and PL/DPL capability. Both lines support the 800 MHz Rebanding.
(You can read a great deal more about Rebanding elsewhere on the web but, in short, in order to separate
certain NEXTEL/cellular radio channels from public safety channels as a means to limit interference
Special Report
The GRE PSR600 Digital Scanner
Features, Operation and Competition
A Scanner Master Ultimate Review
GRE
PSR100 Handheld and PSR200 Desktop
GRE
PSR300 Handheld and PSR400 Base/Mobile,
Radio Shack
PRO164 Handhelds and PRO163 Base/Mobiles
GRE
PSR500 Handheld and PSR600 Base/Mobile
Radio Shack
PRO106 Handheld and PRO197 Base/Mobile
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Related Manuals for Scanner Master GRE PSR600
Summary of Contents for Scanner Master GRE PSR600
- Page 1 Special Report The GRE PSR600 Digital Scanner Features, Operation and Competition A Scanner Master Ultimate Review Copyright 2009, Richard Carlson/Scanner Master Corporation Introduction GRE has produced scanners for the US market for decades, but they are a new name in the industry here.
- Page 2 Butel’s ARC- 500 available through Scanner Master. You can also use a cloning cable thru this jack and clone the radio to and from other GRE digital scanners as well as the Radio Shack counterparts.
- Page 3 GPS unit and use that to control what you want to listen to (a fantastic feature for mobile use that is described elsewhere on Scanner Master’s site). In addition, the Uniden has Fire Tone Out, the ability to use Remote Heads and other fun to use and explore features.
- Page 4 The GRE digital radios (as well as some Radio Shack digital scanners made by GRE) have a feature called V-Scanners. These are basically 21 sets of scanner memories available to be loaded into your scanner. Imagine it like having 21 different scanners in one, but you can only listen to one at a time. This is useful for people that travel often between several locales or have multiple scanning targets.
- Page 5 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.
- Page 6 One very nice feature of the PSR600 which the Uniden scanners cannot match is the ability to decode CTCSS/DCS and P25 during searches at the same time. With the Uniden it’s one or the other, but not both. Trunking Like all digital scanners these days, the PSR600 can monitor several types of trunking. The most common are Motorola (3600 baud data channels), APCO25 (9600 baud data channels), EDACS Wide and EDACS Narrow and LTR.
- Page 7 Conventional Scanning Remember the old days when you could enter in the local police and fire channels into your scanner, hit the scan button and enjoy listening? While those days still exist in some areas, the new generation of scanners are more complicated to program, even for the Plain-Jane conventional channels still used by many agencies.
- Page 8 Since many channels are shared among many users, some may have switched over to NFM while others have not, at least not yet. If listening to both NFM and FM users on the same scanner channel is not working for you then you could use the CTCSS or DCS feature and program in a separate channel for each. PL, DPL, CTCSS, DCS, NAC, etc.
- Page 9 RadioReference.com and other websites will often already have the proper codes listed so a little research may be all you need. Searching and Sweeping All scanners allow you to search between a set of frequencies in order to find new (to you at least) channels.
- Page 10 On the rear of the radio is a center pin coaxial power connector so you can plug in an external power source to run the radio. The external power should be 13.8 VDC, with at least 600 mA. The PSR600 comes with an AC power supply and a DC cable.
- Page 11 Scanner Master program the radio for you for a fee. A good percentage of Scanner Master’s customers do this very thing. If you have dealt with programming scanners before, you will still need to know that this PSR600 works markedly different than any other scanner.
- Page 12 Another Expert Menu item is AudioBoost. This pumps up the audio on that channel by 6dB. Since some systems use lower modulation levels than others, this will allow you to adjust weaker audio to match the rest of the channels. Lastly there is a Hit Count item in the Expert Menu.
- Page 13 If you remember programming in a specific channel but can’t remember where you left it, you can search the radio for it. Using the FIND feature is pretty easy. Press the Program key, then the Edit soft key and lastly the Find soft key. Select how you want to search, such as by locked out status or the text tag. Select the method you want.
- Page 14 radio in a matter of a minute or two. The Radio Shack model 42-2387A or any similar stereo cable can be used. Object Numbers When you enter a Scannable object into memory it gets assigned a sequential number. This number can be used to go directly to that object and for your reference.
- Page 15 Don’t forget to add names to your Scan Lists. Press the GLOB soft key and scroll down to the Scan Lists menu. Use the arrow keys to move the curser and use the standard GRE Text Tag procedures to edit the names.
- Page 16 * You monitor a large networked system with multiple sites. Recommended Accessories When people invest $500 for a scanner, they probably want to protect it, get some accessories to go with it or otherwise add to the experience. Scanner Master (http://www.scannermaster.com) has a full line of...
- Page 17 Here are a few that you might be interested in: Lose your AC adapter? Want a second one to keep for travel? Use this adapter from Scanner Master. You can also buy an assortment of remote speakers (amplified or not), headphones, antennas and more. Just go to http://www.scannermaster.com/Accessories_s/3.htm...
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