Scanner Worked Great, But Now this 800MHZ??

[Jono40141]

Hello,
I am having terrible reception on my Pro-97 scanner. Everything is programmed correctly and everything comes in just not very clear. Does anyone have a solution? I know I will probably be looking into an external antenna. I saw an antenna at Radioshack that was an 800MHZ antenna. Will an 800MHZ antenna help me? All these frequencies are on 800 Frequencies. All the other frequencies seem great except these 800MHZ TRS frequencies.

I am on a campus listening to campus police and I can't even clearly hear them talk. It is very static like with voices.

*Please note I am living in a dorm surrounded by concrete walls* I have 5 bars of cell phone service so the walls cannot be that bad.
Thank you.

 

[rcvmo]

you know, you may be encountering multiple simulcast signals from your recieving location. The way to get the best recption I've found is make an 800 MHz dipole antenna hang it on the door facing a window with minimum length of coax. You really run into problems when you hoist an external or gain antenna on this scanner. There's many schematics of construction on the web. Try it out.
Good luck.
rcvmo

 

[diskmonger]

The 5 bars of cell phone service could be your problem. If you have a cell phone transmitter on your building or nearby...

 

[16b]

Does it come in better if you stand right outside the building, or for that matter, place the scanner near a window? If your scanner has an attenuator, turn it on and see if the signal gets better or worse. As diskmonger said, it is possible that your scanner is getting blasted by a nearby cellular site (perhaps even on your building). If this is the case, the problem might be a combination of the strong signal from the cell site and the concrete building degrading the signal from the trunking system.

 

[WayneH]

Not Motorola specific; moved to GS.

 

[wogggieee]

*Please note I am living in a dorm surrounded by concrete walls* I have 5 bars of cell phone service so the walls cannot be that bad.
Thank you.

Dorms are bad for reception. When i was in the dorms i couldn't get even local AM stations. I could get 800mhz stuff, but it was usually better if i was by the windows. I usually kept my scanner such that the antenna was in the window to try to overcome the walls. This worked well for me to local stuff, but i couldn't get distant stuff. I did the same for my 2 meter HT as well. Again, i could only hit local repeaters. When i went outside i could do much further.

 

[jonny290]

"bad reception" means about eight diff things with FM transmissions

BUT I bet you dollars to donuts that's being overloaded by a 250w paging transmitter or something on your dorm roof and the whole receiver front end gets shut down as a result

strongly doubt we can blame this on a concrete dorm wall as that's the exact reason we use 800 mhz, it has superb penetration into city structures.

 

[Altpensacola]

check the wire!

Before you buy anything open the thing up and see if the one small wire that connects to the antennae has broke, it is a stiff wire that breaks easy, and mine has been replaced twice.
I could still pick up VHF when 800 would sound like you describe.

 

[N8IAA]

Hello

I am on a campus listening to campus police and I can't even clearly hear them talk. It is very static like with voices.

*Please note I am living in a dorm surrounded by concrete walls* I have 5 bars of cell phone service so the walls cannot be that bad.
Thank you.

What trs are you listening to? Where?
Larry