The scanner scans conventional frequencies. A 
frequency, expressed in kHz or MHz, is the tuning 
location of a station. To find active frequencies, 
use the search function or consult an online 
resource such as www.radioreference.com.  
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. The scanner is 
preprogrammed with all the frequencies allocated 
to the Ham, Marine, Aircraft, and Police (Fire/
Emergency) services. 
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 (numbered 0-9) Each bank 
contains 20 channels (numbered 0-19). So the 
scanner has 200 channels total. 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 into 
channels, you can scan the channels.
Use each channel-storage bank to group 
frequencies. For example, the police department 
might use four frequencies in your town while the 
fire department uses an additional four. You could 
program the police frequencies in bank 0, and 
program the fire department frequencies in bank 1.
Birdie Frequencies 
Every scanner has birdie frequencies. Birdies are 
signals created by the scanner’s internal circuits. 
These stray frequencies might interfere with 
broadcasts on the same or similar frequencies. If