Scanning and Locking a Signal

The most common wasted sweep is a sweep with nowhere to write. Take an empty tape before you touch the scanner. The sweep itself is cheap; the return is not, and a detected signal that has no media to land on is a return you have to find again.

With media loaded, open the scanner and start the sweep. The array will begin hunting across the band and the display will populate as contacts come back.

A contact on the display is not a signal yet. You have to bring it into focus by adjusting two values at once: polarity and frequency. The two interact, which is why sweeping the dial blindly takes longer than reading the return and moving deliberately.

Work one axis, watch how the return responds, then work the other. When both are close, the display sharpens and the console stops complaining. Locking is the moment the fuzzy contact collapses into a readable object with a class, a size and a quality - and that object is what you will spend the rest of the shift handling.

Not every return is worth the same. A zero-level signal is unrefined: nothing has been done to it, no processing has been applied, and it is exactly what the job paperwork asks you to bring back. Higher-grade returns are the product of work you do later, and handing one in when a raw sample was requested does not count.

The catalogue on this site records 274 signals across five bands, each with a payload size, an object class, a quality and a spawn chance. The rarest entries are not the ones you should be hunting on your first shift; a low-chance contact that you cannot lock is worth less than a boring one you can.

The console offers a red control that deletes the signal outright. It looks like a trap and it is usually one: once a return is gone, the sweep is spent. But there is a real case for it - a contact that refuses to focus, or one whose object class is so poor that the download would occupy media you need for the job.

Delete deliberately, not out of frustration. The rule of thumb is that a signal you cannot lock within a reasonable effort is worth less than the media it would occupy.

Every catalogue entry carries a four-tier sell ladder, printed on its analysis card on this site. The tiers are the prices the same signal fetches at different points in the chain, lowest first. A signal sold raw returns the bottom tier; the upper tiers are what processing and refinement buy you.

That is the entire economic argument for the processing bench: the difference between tier one and tier four on a single heavy return can exceed a whole shift of raw sales.