How to Program a Radio Shack Police Scanner

By Pamela Gardapee

Learning how to program a Radio Shack police scanner will allow you to listen to local police activity, or find out what is going on around the city with road crews. You can program the scanner to listen to specific channels, or scan through all frequencies that the scanner picks up.

Set the squelch. Turn the squelch knob located by the volume control both ways until the static stops.

Add frequencies to your scanner. Press "Manual" and enter the channel where you want to store the frequency. Press "Program" and enter the frequency on the keypad. Press "WX/E" to save the setting.

Search for frequencies with the limited-search feature. Press the "Program" button, then "Limit." "LO" will appear on the screen. Enter the low frequency where you want to begin searching. Press the "WX/E" button and "HI" will appear on the screen. Enter the highest frequency you want to search to and press "WX/E" again. Press "(\ /)" on the scanner to begin searching between the low and high frequencies.

Find a frequency you have programmed in manually. Press "Manual," enter the channel number on the keypad and press "Manual" again. To stop on a channel during scanning, press "Manual."

Lock out channels that you do not want to listen to. Press the "L/O" button when the scanner stops on the channel. To reinstate the channel, press "Manual" and enter the channel number. Press "L/O" again to activate the channel.

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