Question about sds-100

Let me start by saying I LOVE my SDS-100. I'm located in North.jersey about 20 mi from NYC so needless to say I have quite a bit to listen to here. The question I have is I programmed the radio with all my Favorites lists but it seems like i'm missing a lot of transmissions. Is there just to many departments to listen to? Our do I just not have it set up right? By the way I'm using the stock antenna which works FINE in my area. Any advice would be GREAT thanks.

I just kind of went through this. The more you have programmed the longer it takes to scan and increases the likelihood you'll miss something.

There is an inexpensive way to deal with it. You can offload some of it to an RTL-SDR device if you have a computer nearby.

I use a program called OP25 which can be installed on a Raspberry Pi as well. If you have a laptop you can run something called Unitrunker (for Windows) or SDRTrunk (cross platform, win, mac, linux).

You can also pick up another inexpensive scanner to scan specific items.

I'm not too picky. I set up just a couple systems that really ,really interest me, basically police and EMS and just cut out the other stuff that's of not much interest to me.

I'm not to sure about the programs you mentioned but I DO have a BC125AT that i do have some of what I want to hear. I just thought that the SDS-100 would catch it all. It sure does a GREAT job on NJSP trunk system and NJICS which I listen to most of the time.

upsmannj said:

I'm not to sure about the programs you mentioned but I DO have a BC125AT that i do have some of what I want to hear. I just thought that the SDS-100 would catch it all. It sure does a GREAT job on NJSP trunk system and NJICS which I listen to most of the time.

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Do you have all the service types enabled for what you want to listen to to?

Given your area and depending upon how it was programmed, your biggest issue is likely that you are scanning too much stuff. There could be other reasons. You would have to provide more details on your configuration.

When I bought my 536 years ago, I attempted to set it up in the parking lot of the store where I purchased it since I was 1+ hours from home. While I was able to getting it running using zip code programming for that drive through the DC area, I hardly heard anything and when I did, it missed lots of transmissions in the form of responses. I learned fairly quickly that there were several major things wrong

• the zip with the default range attempted to scan way too much stuff (even today I find it trying to scan things that aren't even close using zip code programming and a range of 0)
  
  
• the default/out of the box service types limit what the scanner tries to receive; you'll definitely want to review those settings if you haven't already

Zip code may not be a problem if you are scanning your custom favorites lists. In that case it could be that the programming includes some trunk system sites that are not near you which also wastes some time and causes missed transmissions.

Make sure you have the service types of interest enabled, are only scanning the close site/sites for the NJSP system, and/or having the scanner pause/hold on just that one system to see if that improves reception.

upsmannj said:

Let me start by saying I LOVE my SDS-100. I'm located in North.jersey about 20 mi from NYC so needless to say I have quite a bit to listen to here. The question I have is I programmed the radio with all my Favorites lists but it seems like i'm missing a lot of transmissions. Is there just to many departments to listen to? Our do I just not have it set up right? By the way I'm using the stock antenna which works FINE in my area. Any advice would be GREAT thanks.

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Also if you have several large trunking sites if you are not traveling in all areas only turn on the sites you are close enough to hear and not waste scan time on sites you can not receive at the time. I know when I will travel in a direction so I only turn those sites on when going that way.

troymail said:

....it missed lots of transmissions in the form of responses. I learned fairly quickly that there were several major things wrong

• the zip with the default range attempted to scan way too much stuff (even today I find it trying to scan things that aren't even close using zip code programming and a range of 0)
• the default/out of the box service types limit what the scanner tries to receive; you'll definitely want to review those settings if you haven't already

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That doesn't make sense. The problem is that the default delay for talk groups are way too short when scanning the database, You have to move the systems to a favorite list and add a 5 or 10 sec delay to the talkgroups to not loose the responses to a call. I've seen youtube videos of people scanning and they hear a dispacther say something and before the trooper answers the scanner picks up another talk group and so on. If you only want the scanner to give fragments of conversations then that's fine but if you want to follow whats really going on then you'll need a much longer delay time.

I wish Uniden could make a user selectable setting that would be used as the default delay time for TG's, both in database and when getting new TG's in favorite list scanning when having search ID enabled.

/Ubbe

It makes lots of sense if you're trying to scan too much and the responses do not come within the default 2 second delay period.

None of us (except the user from post #1) knows exactly what his comment "i'm missing a lot of transmissions" really means.

Unfortunately, unless more information is provided and/or we see the user's configuration (fav lists), it'n nearly impossible to know for sure what is happening.

troymail said:

It makes lots of sense if you're trying to scan too much and the responses do not come within the default 2 second delay period.

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Then you assume that there will only be one active TG of all systems you scan, to be able to go one full circle and come back to the same system to receive the response, without any other system having any conversations that will interupt the scan. That doesn't make sense.
It migh have worked using a 8 channel crystal scanner.

/Ubbe

I just want to thank all who replied. It seems I just had to much programmed in the radio.

I wish i had your problem i live out in the country and i try to add things to interest me as one system is not taking the edge off lol.

seth21w said:

I wish i had your problem i live out in the country and i try to add things to interest me as one system is not taking the edge off lol.

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LOL.