Bloomington SAFE-T site 866.2500 issue?

Merry Christmas everyone! I'm hoping someone can help with an issue I've been having for the past week or so. I listen to the Bloomington SAFE-T site. For the past week, my scanner occassionally stops on 866.2500 MHz with a dead carrier (no audio). The strange thing is that a talkgroup ID still shows up on the display, but does not show LNK or P25 like it normally does. Seems to be random, and eventually after 30 seconds or a minute of dead air the scanner will start scanning normally again. Needless to say this is very annoying.

Some more info:

* No conventional channels are programmed into the scanners, just the Bloomington SAFE-T site
* No changes to either scanner's programming for about 6 months, and it's always worked just fine up until the past week or so
* Happens on both my 996T and 396T, and also on the RR audio feed for Bloomington. Don't know what kind of scanner that is.

Any idea what might cause this, and if there are any settings I can change on my scanners to fix it?

I do have a conventional scanner with a discriminator tap that I could hook up to Unitrunker or Trunk88 if needed, but I don't really know what to look for.

Thanks!

Kevin

Ive seen my PRO-106 do this exact same thing.......lock onto a CC, display a talkgroup but no audio..hold for several seconds then resume scanning..I think the cause might be a weak control channel decode rate..

Another possibility is interference from something else like a PC. I experience similar interference from and oscilloscope at work. It is of intermittent nature in my case. Did you try moving it to different locations?

GTO_04

GTO_04 said:

Another possibility is interference from something else like a PC. I experience similar interference from and oscilloscope at work. It is of intermittent nature in my case. Did you try moving it to different locations?

GTO_04

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Thanks, but I don't think it's local interference in this instance. It happens at home (admittedly there are lots of computers and such nearby that generate noise), but it also happens while driving around town, and it happens on the online RR audio feed for Bloomington too.

As far as it being a weak CC decode rate I suppose that's possible, but it doesn't happen on the Paynetown site which is further away from me than Bloomington.

It's not the "machine gunning" noise that Uniden scanners are notorious for.

Is there anyone else near Bloomington who can confirm that this behavior is happening with their scanner as well on the Bloomington tower?

Kevin

kevinratcliff said:

Thanks, but I don't think it's local interference in this instance. It happens at home (admittedly there are lots of computers and such nearby that generate noise), but it also happens while driving around town, and it happens on the online RR audio feed for Bloomington too.

As far as it being a weak CC decode rate I suppose that's possible, but it doesn't happen on the Paynetown site which is further away from me than Bloomington.

It's not the "machine gunning" noise that Uniden scanners are notorious for.

Is there anyone else near Bloomington who can confirm that this behavior is happening with their scanner as well on the Bloomington tower?

Kevin

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That pretty much eliminates interference then.

I had a Pro-96 that would do the same thing on a single frequency, but it was one of the voice frequencies on SAFE-T. It happened no matter where I was. In my case it turned out to be a bad crystal in the Pro-96 and the problem never resurfaced after it was repaired.

Since you have the same issue on two different scanners it is very unlikely to be anything in the scanner.

This is going to be more difficult to track down. Keep us posted on what you find out.

GTO_04

GTO_04 said:

This is going to be more difficult to track down. Keep us posted on what you find out.

GTO_04

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I think I found a fix for my issue:

Digital End Code detection - The RadioReference Wiki

I enabled the Digital End Code detection as specified in the above Wiki article and the problem appears to be gone!

There doesn't seem to be a lot of documentation for this feature, but so long as it keeps working and doesn't cause any additional problems I'm happy!

Thanks all for your suggestions.

Kevin

That might be the problem with the Bloomington IN live feed.

Mark

I was having that same issue

I was having that same issue with my scanner. I followed the directions from the post above and just waiting to see if the problem will resolve.

Thank you,

Tim

P.S. I am the one providing the Bloomington SAFE-T live feed.

Thank you...

It looks like the Digital End Code detection was the problem. The problem has gone away since I made the programing change.

Thank you,

Tim

Indynetman,Thanks a lot.

Mark

The issue seems to still be there

indynetman said:

It looks like the Digital End Code detection was the problem. The problem has gone away since I made the programing change.

Thank you,

Tim

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The issue seems to still be there. It does not seem to be as prevalent since I enabled the Digital End Code detection, but I still hear the problem every once in a while.

Tim

Experienced the same issue on my PSR-500 while mobile in the Bloomington area over the Holidays. Most notable on Monroe County Sheriff Dispatch talkgroup.

KD4YGG said:

Experienced the same issue on my PSR-500 while mobile in the Bloomington area over the Holidays. Most notable on Monroe County Sheriff Dispatch talkgroup.

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The issue is evident with an analog non-trunking scanner too. If you listen to 866.2500 MHz, you'll hear a user "talking" (just digital P25 noise), but when they're done talking the frequency stays active with carrier-only (no audio) for a good while.

I sent an email to the IPSC NOC on January 1 reporting this. Don't know if they'll appreciate hearing from a scanner listener, but at least I've done my good deed for 2011 ;-)

Kevin

kevinratcliff said:

The issue is evident with an analog non-trunking scanner too. If you listen to 866.2500 MHz, you'll hear a user "talking" (just digital P25 noise), but when they're done talking the frequency stays active with carrier-only (no audio) for a good while.

I sent an email to the IPSC NOC on January 1 reporting this. Don't know if they'll appreciate hearing from a scanner listener, but at least I've done my good deed for 2011 ;-)

Kevin

Click to expand...

I think IPSC would love to hear about the small things going on affecting Tower sites or the system in general...lets face it, LEOs and Dispatches seem to have no CLUE as to what is going on with the system, and they sure dont understand what to do when there is a problem!!

I reported a minor problem on tower affiliations and talkgroup grants and they fixed the issue within 24 hours...there response is fabulous!!!