Bcd536hp Waterbury

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mik1

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Does the bcd536hp perform any better on waterburys simulcast system.
 

prospectcar13

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I'm curious on that one too. Would love some feedback on Waterbury and CSP before making the purchase. I use a psr 800 and HP1 now.
 

dispatcher812

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I'm curious on that one too. Would love some feedback on Waterbury and CSP before making the purchase. I use a psr 800 and HP1 now.

Not sure on Waterbury but as far as the CSP, for me the jury is still out. At times it decodes and receives like a champ, other times I barley here anything at all. For instance, I have a 90 minutes commute one way to college. Plainfield-New Haven. One night I left school in NH at 2100 and arrived home around 2220. I heard 1 CSP transmission and that was Troop I. I have my scanner set up with GPS so that the Troops turn on and off as I driver through them. On the other hand I can drive 25 minutes from work to home and Troop E is non-stop. Also At times the receive is garbled and almost unintelligible. I am wondering if my antenna needs to be replaced.

All in all though I am very happy with it. I also listen tot he Waterford, New London, East Lyme system and it works perfect on that.
 

cg

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I have held off buying the new scanners because of all the problems reported through the various forums. I think you would need to put a second scanner side by side to evaluate any improvement.

chris
 

ems170

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I believe the performance has improved with the x36 line on P25 systems, namely waterbury. I used to receive a lot of cutouts and distortion on my 396xt, especially in waterbury where the 3 sites were all being received. Now really the only time I have noticed any pixilation, the dispatcher usually asks the unit to repeat. this would indicate its an issue with the system/subscriber unit and not the scanner. The units still have their issues, but nothing that is earth shattering.

I have noted degraded performance on Type II systems. These have higher BERs than the 396xt on the previous firmware. I reverted my xt to the previous version of firmware. I thought performance degraded some. My 396xt would have BER in the single digits with the x36 in the 30s-40s. This was improved some by switching auto threshold to manual and adjusting the level to the system. I now have BERs in the 10-30 range. Mind you these levels are with full signal and being about 5-7 miles from the site.

I have not tested the unit on p25 phase II.
 

MFCJR

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I compared my BCD536HP with my PSR-800 with New Britain's P-25 system. The BCD536HP is not picking up on some talkgroups that the PSR-800 is. The PSR-800 picks up on talkgroups faster and the voice is more muffled on the on P-25 systems with the BCD536HP then the PSR-800 is. Unless they come up with a good fix the PSR-800 is still King to me.

Mike
 

MFCJR

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I realized the reason I was missing some talkgroups on the BCD536HP was my fault. If you don't go through the service type list and see what service types are on or off you won't pick all the talkgroups up. I found some were set to off. It's a nice feature but you need to go through the list. It's all new to me.

Mike
 

mik1

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Waterburys radio system

Thank you all for your input, I think i will hold off on buying a new bcd536hp or maybe just buy a used motorola xts5000, I here the 5000 is an excellent radio. I wish they just stayed on UHF pd and vhf hi fd. Owell at least I can still listen to 45.86 hot line!!!!!
 

K2KOH

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I took a ride out to Waterbury and used my 536 AND my 436. Both performed well on the Waterbury system. To the poster who said the jury is out on the CSP, to be honest, they sounded like crap on my GRE/Radio Shack Pro 197. When it comes to CSP I think it's more them than the scanner, Just my humble opinion
 

dispatcher812

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When it comes to CSP I think it's more them than the scanner, Just my humble opinion

I agree with you. There are times they come in PERFECT and others I can barely make it out. All in all I am very happy with this scanner.
 

ems170

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I have had my issues over time with scanners and the CSP system. I am only doing a side by side comparison of the 436/536/396xt. There are plenty of threads that mention difficulty with Type II and improvement of p25 with the new units. It must have something to do with the simulcast improvements. As I had said the 436 performs as well as the 396xt with the newest firmware. The 396 performed much better on the CSP system with the previous firmware.
 

K2KOH

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I have had my issues over time with scanners and the CSP system. I am only doing a side by side comparison of the 436/536/396xt. There are plenty of threads that mention difficulty with Type II and improvement of p25 with the new units. It must have something to do with the simulcast improvements. As I had said the 436 performs as well as the 396xt with the newest firmware. The 396 performed much better on the CSP system with the previous firmware.

I had problems with the Western District of CSP more than the other two districts. I used the 536 with the GPS as I was driving to Cape Cod, and while the Western District talk groups sounded crappy, Central and East sounded pretty good. I can't figure that one out for the life of me. Scanner is doing real nice up here on the Mass Analog system. Conventional P25 is excellent; NPS was just fine from the National Seashore.
 

dispatcher812

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I recently adjusted the P25 Threshold for the Troop D and E sites. I bumped it all the way to 10. I have seen a significant improvement the past two days.
 

cg

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Any problems with Waterbury losing the band plan with the new scanners?

chris
 
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