Probe Tips 3

Probe Database Tips

This trick will work with any 'table' you find on websites and is very handy for picking frequency information off of a website and getting it into Probe with a simple import function. This can come in handy when you want to travel to a new area or experiment with a new set of local frequencies. For example, I wanted to find trunked systems that had active control frequencies around me so I could put them into my trunking scanner and / or Trunker software. I could build a search file with Probe and search the whole range but I wanted to just use the active trunked systems to speed things up.

I do not have the FCC database on CD ROM, so I went out to the FCC search page and looked up the trunked sites in a 15-mile radius of my house. I then used Microsoft Excel to import the information from the website using the table import function. That put the records into my Excel Spreadsheet. I then added the blank line and made the field names bold. I changed the frequency field to 'number' and 4 digits. I deleted the imported 'status' information because I did not need it for Probe. I then I exported the finished file to a CSV file that can be imported by Probe. I thought it was kind of an interesting way to get to the data. If you need to do more searches, or want to add more information, you can append it to your spreadsheet before you export it to a CSV file.

Here is an example of the table output page from the FCC site. Click on the picture for a bigger view.

Microsoft Excel has a function to import data from web site tables. It is under the main menu heading of 'data', then sub heading of 'get external data', then sub heading 'new web query'. The new version of Probe allows you to import "CSV" data - a common text file format supported by many database and spreadsheet programs. Probe allows you to pick which data fields are imported and where the data goes.

Here is an example of my Excel spreadsheet imported from the FCC site. Click on the picture for a bigger view.

I was then able to use the imported file with Probe by setting the 'monitoring time' to 25 seconds and the 'log minimum airtime' to 24 seconds. This let me skip the logging of voice communications on these frequencies and log only control channel data frequencies. Turn 'Priority' and 'TacScan' off. I tried to let the system run and log on weekends and at night when the voice traffic was low, but you have to remember most systems change control frequencies and you want to run long enough to catch them all. You could extend your times a bit but this setting seemed to work for me. I then used the log information with my Trunker software and in my trunking scanners.

Again, this trick will work with any 'table' you find on websites and is very handy for picking the information off the site and entering it into Probe with a simple import function. When you find frequency data on a web page that is set up in a table format, you can just capture the information and import it into Probe... really works slick.