BCD436HP/BCD536HP: BCD436HP Slow Scanning?

[cr8054]

I recently bought a Uniden BCD436HP scanner. One thing I have noticed is my Uniden BCD436HP scans slower than my BC345CRS. Is this normal? Also signals from railroad telemetry devices are either skipped or the transmission shows the signal but not the audio. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[n1chu]

You are comparing an analogue only radio with the 436 which can additionally monitor digital. But first, each radio must be scanning the same agencies and nothing else in order to get a good comparison… in other words both radios must be programmed as closely as possible to each other. Let’s assume you have programmed both alike and you notice a difference in scan rates… what do the spec sheets say about their scan speeds? Are they the same? Are you using the same delay settings? Etc. It all plays into the comparison. And that’s not to mention both radios start off with differing designs.

 

[trentbob]

Very little information to go on here. To start with always make sure all of your service types are turned on. Are you listening to any digital area wide Phase 1 or Phase 2 systems? If so have you avoided all of the sites except a few that you need or are you rolling through all of them regardless of where they are? How many systems are you listening to?

Are you using favorites lists? Zip code scanning? Are you using the stock antenna on both radios? There are so many factors here that can affect your scanning speed on your 436. How much are you listening to?

You know the old saying the more you scan the less you hear.

 

[Ubbe]

They both should scan at a 80ch/s rate when scanning analog channels. For the telemetry channels, check that the audio mode are set to only Analog. The 436 doesn't display the channels while scanning, so is it search mode that are slow? If you only have a few channels in scan or search in the 345 it will be easier to hear that short telemetry bursts. But if the 436 are scanning a lot more it could be on different channels when those data transmissions are made and it scan those channels just between bursts.

For the 436 in search mode, set the audio type to Analog and not All to be able to compare to the analog 345 scanner.

/Ubbe

 

[trentbob]

I noticed original poster that you never responded to any of my questions. I went back and looked at your previous posts from the past and it appears as you may be scanning NJICS.

Just to reiterate some of my questions, do you just have one simulcast site on, avoiding all the others? or are you rolling through many different sites. It doesn't matter how many talk groups you have on that system but it will slow down scanning if you are rolling through a lot of sites that are out of your area that you don't need, you should limit it to the one simulcast site that serves your area. Are you listening to more than one system? This is one of the most common things that slows the scanner down. Just curious and trying to help.

 

[cr8054]

Sorry for the slow response, I took a nasty fall so I have been out of it. To answer your queries, I scan my hometown of Oakland, NJ, Franklin Lakes, Pompton Lakes and Wayne, NJ. In addition I am scanning the NYSW Railway, NJTransit's Main Line, Head and and rear end telemetry devices for trains. Wayne is a trunked system with 30 or so talk groups. The rest are non trunked systems, I normally do not scan Oakland's digital talk group as I receive their analog frequencies just fine. Franklin Lakes is mostly analog, but police dispatch is a one channel digital frequency. I do appreciate your help.

 

[cr8054]

You are comparing an analogue only radio with the 436 which can additionally monitor digital. But first, each radio must be scanning the same agencies and nothing else in order to get a good comparison… in other words both radios must be programmed as closely as possible to each other. Let’s assume you have programmed both alike and you notice a difference in scan rates… what do the spec sheets say about their scan speeds? Are they the same? Are you using the same delay settings? Etc. It all plays into the comparison. And that’s not to mention both radios start off with differing designs.

They are both programmed differently. I do not want to reprogram as I spent a few days just getting all the frequencies I wanted programmed in. I have programmed my town and all surrounding towns into the 436. The analog scanner only has Oakland, my hometown and Pompton Lakes in addition to the NYSW, NJTransit Main Line and the EOT frequencies. The 436 has Those channels plus Franklin Lakes and Wayne. Wayne is a trunked digital system with 30 or so talk groups. Franklin Lakes has a number of analog frequencies plus police dispatch channel which is a one frequency digital channel.

 

[cr8054]

Very little information to go on here. To start with always make sure all of your service types are turned on. Are you listening to any digital area wide Phase 1 or Phase 2 systems? If so have you avoided all of the sites except a few that you need or are you rolling through all of them regardless of where they are? How many systems are you listening to?

Are you using favorites lists? Zip code scanning? Are you using the stock antenna on both radios? There are so many factors here that can affect your scanning speed on your 436. How much are you listening to?

You know the old saying the more you scan the less you hear.

When I listen to Oakland, I am scanning their analog frequencies as I receive them just fine on both scanners. Wayne is digital only and trunked. They have 30 or so talk groups. Franklin Lakes has only one digital channel NAC 293. Still its quite a few frequencies. The railroads are one channel apiece plus two frequencies for the EOT's, head end and rear end.

 

[cr8054]

Very little information to go on here. To start with always make sure all of your service types are turned on. Are you listening to any digital area wide Phase 1 or Phase 2 systems? If so have you avoided all of the sites except a few that you need or are you rolling through all of them regardless of where they are? How many systems are you listening to?

Are you using favorites lists? Zip code scanning? Are you using the stock antenna on both radios? There are so many factors here that can affect your scanning speed on your 436. How much are you listening to?

You know the old saying the more you scan the less you hear.

No zip code scanning. The analog scanner is on a mono band mag mount antenna tuned to 161.000 MHz, no ground plane. The 436 is on a multi band magnet antenna suck to a metal plate for a ground plane. I am amazed with its performance. Its pulling in signals as far as Ridgewood, NJ as some of Franklin Lakes fire and EMS frequencies are apparently shared with Wyckoff and Ridgewood. I do not hear NJTransit often but it does come in when the weather is just right. The NYSW is just blocks away and the come in clearly when they are in town. I lose them somewhere between Pompton Lakes and Riverdale to the west and I cannot hear the defect detector which is east of Campgaw. Wayne is definitely very chatty, so is Pompton Lakes as they also cover Riverdale which a good chunk of territory with State Highway 23 and I-287 to cover in addition to local stuff.

 

[wtp]

it might be tough, but try separating the frequencies and don't duplicate them.
i have 5 older radios and only one has a copy of some of the active freqs and is at arms length for quick scan button hitting if i have to.
so 4 radios each have their own freqs and are set by the antenna on it. 150 band antenna on the radio gets 150 band freqs etc.
if you want to hear more, get more radios ! i am always in favor of more radios.
even the old radios got the rail band, so you could start there.
check garage sales, i bought a uniden bc140 for $5, but only wanted the antenna for my bc170. the 140 fried itself.
does the Bergen Record still have an articles for sale section ??

 

[trentbob]

No zip code scanning. The analog scanner is on a mono band mag mount antenna tuned to 161.000 MHz, no ground plane. The 436 is on a multi band magnet antenna suck to a metal plate for a ground plane. I am amazed with its performance. Its pulling in signals as far as Ridgewood, NJ as some of Franklin Lakes fire and EMS frequencies are apparently shared with Wyckoff and Ridgewood. I do not hear NJTransit often but it does come in when the weather is just right. The NYSW is just blocks away and the come in clearly when they are in town. I lose them somewhere between Pompton Lakes and Riverdale to the west and I cannot hear the defect detector which is east of Campgaw. Wayne is definitely very chatty, so is Pompton Lakes as they also cover Riverdale which a good chunk of territory with State Highway 23 and I-287 to cover in addition to local stuff.

Okay, good report, sometimes posters with questions, you have to keep asking over and over like you're pulling teeth. Your report of what you're listening to is very complete and informative.

As far as the amount of things that you are scanning it doesn't really matter how many items like conventional simplex Railroad frequencies or talk groups as part of let's say the Wayne phase 1 system that will slow you down, it's how chatty some of those objects are.

You have 1 site with seven frequencies all of which could be used as a control Channel. If it's always the same control Channel and never changes you could always just put in the control channel and eliminate all the other frequencies, if it just stops working one day then they have changed the control channel and you would have to go in and replace it. Not a big deal and I don't think that's slowing you down if you are scanning all of the site frequencies.

You have four towers or sub sites, here is your coverage area.



So here's my theory about what might be slowing you down. Again it's not how many conventional items or talk groups that you scan but it does matter how busy some of those frequencies or talk groups are.

For example if you want to listen to every talk group on the Wayne system that's not going to slow you down unless there's five or six talk groups that are constantly chatty and busy. That's going to bring it to a halt and you're going to miss a lot of stuff. So I would get rid of if you haven't already the school stuff, the DPW stuff etcetera, handpick essential dispatch talk groups for the police fire and EMS. Much of the stuff you listen to in these three categories is routine stuff that's not always important but still chatting nonetheless. So Pare down the chattiness if something really happens important then you can go in and focus on the secondary frequencies to hear the important event which isn't necessarily going to happen a lot.

As far as the railroad stuff, on the distant systems reception of course will vary because of various reasons, if things get a little noisy or staticky temporarily avoid them for a while. Hit avoid once and it's temporary and will restore the frequency when you restart the radio. Railroad can get also very routine. Nothing like sitting through a form d to pass a stop signal.

If you are indeed missing things it could be just a scanner cycling around slowly because of all the stops it has to make on the chatter. These are my thoughts, pare down what you're listening to, not because it'll go faster because you're listening to less conventional frequencies or talk groups but you're listening to less chatter. The phase one Wayne system is going to slow scanning down just by the nature of it being a system.

That's my two cents.. Bob.

 

[cr8054]

it might be tough, but try separating the frequencies and don't duplicate them.
i have 5 older radios and only one has a copy of some of the active freqs and is at arms length for quick scan button hitting if i have to.
so 4 radios each have their own freqs and are set by the antenna on it. 150 band antenna on the radio gets 150 band freqs etc.
if you want to hear more, get more radios ! i am always in favor of more radios.
even the old radios got the rail band, so you could start there.
check garage sales, i bought a uniden bc140 for $5, but only wanted the antenna for my bc170. the 140 fried itself.
does the Bergen Record still have an articles for sale section ??

I dont know. I havent read the Bergen Record in quite a while. I may have to get a copy and check it out. I do have a couple of radios. I have two BC125AT's and a BC355N. I do have the BC345CRS scanning so I dont miss anything happening in town.

 

[cr8054]

it might be tough, but try separating the frequencies and don't duplicate them.
i have 5 older radios and only one has a copy of some of the active freqs and is at arms length for quick scan button hitting if i have to.
so 4 radios each have their own freqs and are set by the antenna on it. 150 band antenna on the radio gets 150 band freqs etc.
if you want to hear more, get more radios ! i am always in favor of more radios.
even the old radios got the rail band, so you could start there.
check garage sales, i bought a uniden bc140 for $5, but only wanted the antenna for my bc170. the 140 fried itself.
does the Bergen Record still have an articles for sale section ??

BTW, thanks for your response.

 

[cr8054]

Okay, good report, sometimes posters with questions, you have to keep asking over and over like you're pulling teeth. Your report of what you're listening to is very complete and informative.

As far as the amount of things that you are scanning it doesn't really matter how many items like conventional simplex Railroad frequencies or talk groups as part of let's say the Wayne phase 1 system that will slow you down, it's how chatty some of those objects are.

You have 1 site with seven frequencies all of which could be used as a control Channel. If it's always the same control Channel and never changes you could always just put in the control channel and eliminate all the other frequencies, if it just stops working one day then they have changed the control channel and you would have to go in and replace it. Not a big deal and I don't think that's slowing you down if you are scanning all of the site frequencies.

You have four towers or sub sites, here is your coverage area.

View attachment 125488

So here's my theory about what might be slowing you down. Again it's not how many conventional items or talk groups that you scan but it does matter how busy some of those frequencies or talk groups are.

For example if you want to listen to every talk group on the Wayne system that's not going to slow you down unless there's five or six talk groups that are constantly chatty and busy. That's going to bring it to a halt and you're going to miss a lot of stuff. So I would get rid of if you haven't already the school stuff, the DPW stuff etcetera, handpick essential dispatch talk groups for the police fire and EMS. Much of the stuff you listen to in these three categories is routine stuff that's not always important but still chatting nonetheless. So Pare down the chattiness if something really happens important then you can go in and focus on the secondary frequencies to hear the important event which isn't necessarily going to happen a lot.

As far as the railroad stuff, on the distant systems reception of course will vary because of various reasons, if things get a little noisy or staticky temporarily avoid them for a while. Hit avoid once and it's temporary and will restore the frequency when you restart the radio. Railroad can get also very routine. Nothing like sitting through a form d to pass a stop signal.

If you are indeed missing things it could be just a scanner cycling around slowly because of all the stops it has to make on the chatter. These are my thoughts, pare down what you're listening to, not because it'll go faster because you're listening to less conventional frequencies or talk groups but you're listening to less chatter. The phase one Wayne system is going to slow scanning down just by the nature of it being a system.

That's my two cents.. Bob.

Thank you. As far as whats programmed in, I only scan police, fire and EMS. Wayne does have a lot of territory to cover and a lot of units running around. Most of the talk for police is on F1 dispatch, F2 information and once in a while surveillance. most of the other talk groups are quiet. Oakland doesnt talk much, especially in the wee hours of the morning.

 

[cr8054]

Okay, good report, sometimes posters with questions, you have to keep asking over and over like you're pulling teeth. Your report of what you're listening to is very complete and informative.

As far as the amount of things that you are scanning it doesn't really matter how many items like conventional simplex Railroad frequencies or talk groups as part of let's say the Wayne phase 1 system that will slow you down, it's how chatty some of those objects are.

You have 1 site with seven frequencies all of which could be used as a control Channel. If it's always the same control Channel and never changes you could always just put in the control channel and eliminate all the other frequencies, if it just stops working one day then they have changed the control channel and you would have to go in and replace it. Not a big deal and I don't think that's slowing you down if you are scanning all of the site frequencies.

You have four towers or sub sites, here is your coverage area.

View attachment 125488

So here's my theory about what might be slowing you down. Again it's not how many conventional items or talk groups that you scan but it does matter how busy some of those frequencies or talk groups are.

For example if you want to listen to every talk group on the Wayne system that's not going to slow you down unless there's five or six talk groups that are constantly chatty and busy. That's going to bring it to a halt and you're going to miss a lot of stuff. So I would get rid of if you haven't already the school stuff, the DPW stuff etcetera, handpick essential dispatch talk groups for the police fire and EMS. Much of the stuff you listen to in these three categories is routine stuff that's not always important but still chatting nonetheless. So Pare down the chattiness if something really happens important then you can go in and focus on the secondary frequencies to hear the important event which isn't necessarily going to happen a lot.

As far as the railroad stuff, on the distant systems reception of course will vary because of various reasons, if things get a little noisy or staticky temporarily avoid them for a while. Hit avoid once and it's temporary and will restore the frequency when you restart the radio. Railroad can get also very routine. Nothing like sitting through a form d to pass a stop signal.

If you are indeed missing things it could be just a scanner cycling around slowly because of all the stops it has to make on the chatter. These are my thoughts, pare down what you're listening to, not because it'll go faster because you're listening to less conventional frequencies or talk groups but you're listening to less chatter. The phase one Wayne system is going to slow scanning down just by the nature of it being a system.

That's my two cents.. Bob.

I do a lot of rail fanning so sometimes hearing a form d can give out some information as to where the train is and any problems that may exist. This is especially true when every train has to copy the form D, you automatically know a train is coming and where he is. I know this is not essential and even an annoyance to someone who is just listening though and one may choose to lock that channel out for while.

 

[trentbob]

I do a lot of rail fanning so sometimes hearing a form d can give out some information as to where the train is and any problems that may exist. This is especially true when every train has to copy the form D, you automatically know a train is coming and where he is. I know this is not essential and even an annoyance to someone who is just listening though and one may choose to lock that channel out for while.

I certainly understand, I had three major jobs in my career, I'm an RN with my degree in public health even though I worked in hospitals mostly. I'm a retired newspaper man but I did spend five years as a railroad engineer. I only stayed 5 years because I did not want to go into Railroad Retirement, I wanted to stay with Social Security.

This this was a long time ago and I left just as the new book of rules was coming into play. We actually used train orders before form D's LOL.

I worked for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority Regional rail system in Philadelphia, the old Pennsylvania Railroad and Reading Railroad and I take the train often so I'm always sure to listen to the Amtrak Road frequency from Trenton to Philadelphia on the Northeast Corridor before the train I'm expecting to board departs, so I can hear that they met their connection with njt and left Trenton on time. That way I know they'll be on time at my stop.

Have fun.

 

[cr8054]

I certainly understand, I had three major jobs in my career, I'm an RN with my degree in public health even though I worked in hospitals mostly. I'm a retired newspaper man but I did spend five years as a railroad engineer. I only stayed 5 years because I did not want to go into Railroad Retirement, I wanted to stay with Social Security.

This this was a long time ago and I left just as the new book of rules was coming into play. We actually used train orders before form D's LOL.

I worked for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority Regional rail system in Philadelphia, the old Pennsylvania Railroad and Reading Railroad and I take the train often so I'm always sure to listen to the Amtrak Road frequency from Trenton to Philadelphia on the Northeast Corridor before the train I'm expecting to board departs, so I can hear that they met their connection with njt and left Trenton on time. That way I know they'll be on time at my stop.

Have fun.

I got to work for Conrail a short time as a brakeman trainee. I learned a lot and got to appreciate what T&E personnel go through. Septa is under NORAC rules. You can find them on the net. The info is still good for the most part even if its not the latest edition. I have heard of form 19's, but that was before my time. Norac still uses Form D's. CSX and NS went to their own rules. CSX uses EC-1's and NS has Track Authorites. CSX and NS operate under Norac in Conrail Shared Assets territory. I actually miss the old Form D's. I think they are a lot safer than EC-1's and Track Authorities.