Scanner programming best practices question

[trnwatcher]

I'm thinking of reprogramming my scanner and am wondeing just how many frequencies that others have programmed into their scanners\radios. A freind has all 96 AAR frequencies programmed into his. It's a nice concept but railfanning with him can be frustrating sometimes as you can get overwhelmed sometimes as the thing is picking up every broadcast in a 20 miles radius. Not too bad here in West Michigan, but around Chicago,OMG!

Currently I have 200 channel capacity (10 banks of 20 channels) I've normally programed 1 bank of 20 for GR area, a couple banks for Chicago, 1 or 2 for Detroit\Toledo area, I even have one with KCIA (Gerald R Ford Intl) frequencies so I can listen to aircraft when I lunch at the viewing area there. The one drawback is that I have some frequecies in the scanner several times.

So my question is this? How are you guys programming your scanner\radios? Do you program your scanner for all 96 AAR frequencies and just lock out the ones you dont want to hear or set it up for specific areas like i have with mine?

[railohio]

Put all railroad frequencies in memory corresponding to AAR channels. It's easier to find channels that way since employees and timetables never use the frequency anyway. Just lock out what you don't need.

[lemscate]

I use one bank per geographic area (LP, UP, Chicago, etc.) with all frequencies labeled, and have one bank for all AAR channels and one for all navigation channels. I use the bank for an area if I have it; if not, I use the AAR bank and lockout any frequencies that are getting static or other junk. This is easy enough for me, since my scanner has 10 banks of 100 channels. So to answer your question, I do both. I find that it works quite well if the scanner has enough memory.

[Norm]

Trnwatcher,

I have a very expensive, $600, Uniden scanner that is so complicated to program I simply put it in the 'manual' mode and monitor the road channel of the line I'm railfanning.