Best scanner for VHF-Hi / UHF Public Safety?

[sparklehorse]

Hello,
I'm getting back into scanning after a hiatus of several years. For a base unit I've had a BC780XLT for the last 14 years, and love it - it still works like a champ. But in my area (Portland, Oregon), we have one analog Motorola type II trunk system that the 780 can't track anymore due to re-banding. We also have one agency that has switched to conventional P25 digital, which the 780 also can't do. So a while ago I got a BCD996XT thinking it would be a good replacement for the 780. Well, it just isn't. The 996 does well on the trunk systems in my area, and does OK on the P25, but for the conventional VHF-Hi and UHF in my area it just doesn't cut it. It simply does not have the same great sensitivity on those bands as my BC780XLT. I'm not talking here about receiving signals from a neighboring county - what I really like to listen to are the agencies from two counties over, the ones that are 50, 60 or 70 miles distant. My 780 has been a great radio for this - hooked up to my rooftop 2-meter yagi with an inline PAR FM notch filter it routinely pulls in distant VHF signals very well (it helps that I live on a hill). But on the same antenna the 996 is deaf to these weak signals. At first I thought my 996 might just be a sub-par or bad unit, something I could get fixed, but I found my BCD396XT is similarly deaf when hooked up to the same antenna.
So my question is this:
What's out there that does as well (or hopefully better) on VHF-Hi and UHF than the BC780XLT?
If it can track a rebanded Motorola type II, great - I can live without digital for now.
How about the BCT15 or BCT15X? How do they compare with the 780 on conventional VHF/UHF?
Also, what about a non-trunking scanner? If there's something even better than the 780 on VHF/UHF, I'd love to hear about it. I've got the 996 already, so a second scanner dedicated to just VHF/UHF would be a good option IF it's an improvement over the 780. Icom? AOR? Others? I'm not averse to spending some money if it's a really good receiver. Older radios I can find on eBay are fine too.
I should mention I've tried the Whistler WS1065 already. It MIGHT be more sensitive on VHF than the 996, but in the RF saturated environment I live in the 1065 gets seriously desensed when hooked up to my rooftop antenna, even with the PAR FM filter. It's probably headed for eBay.
Thanks very much for your help!
Gordon,
Portland, Oregon

 

[Voyager]

You are going to be hard pressed to find something better than the 780. Still, the XT should not be that much worse.

 

[gewecke]

WHEN and IF I decide to move to Portland from Ill. my 780xlt and Pro-197 will be coming with me, so I'll be set in that department.

73,
n9zas

 

[DickH]

You could be experiencing front end overload on the Unidens. Have you tried the attenuator?

As far as rebanding, Portland has no freqs. you can't track with the 780. Clackamas is probably the one you can't track since two of their freqs. have been rebanded and can't be tracked with your 780. Clark & Wash. should be OK.

 

[sparklehorse]

You are going to be hard pressed to find something better than the 780. Still, the XT should not be that much worse.

Hello Yoyager,
The 996XT with my setup receives VHF/UHF signals out to about 30 miles just fine. I think most folks would find that adequate. In my case I don't have much nearby that is still on VHF/UHF conventional. All the surrounding counties are on 800MHz Moto systems, which I don't enjoy listening to that much. The 780 pulls in VHF transmissions from 50-60 miles routinely that are very readable. In my situation that means I can listen to eight rural counties on conventional with the 780 vs. only two counties with the 996.

You're right, I may not find something better for conventional than the 780, but I think you can see now why I'd sure like to. You'd think receiver technology would have improved some in the nearly 15 years since the 780 came out!

You could be experiencing front end overload on the Unidens. Have you tried the attenuator?
As far as rebanding, Portland has no freqs. you can't track with the 780. Clackamas is probably the one you can't track since two of their freqs. have been rebanded and can't be tracked with your 780. Clark & Wash. should be OK.

Hello Dick,
I tried an inline variable attenuator with both the 996 and the Whistler. It helped the Whistler some, but didn't help the 996, in fact it degraded UHF on the 996 quite a bit. I have a Radio Shack TV FM trap filter on order - I'll test that out with both radios and report back.

As for our local Moto systems, I don't get good reception of the Washington County simulcast from my location, so I listen to those talkgroups on the Clackamas system since most Wash Co talkgroups are broadcast there. Which for me means that both Wash Co and Clackamas have roughly every fifth transmission dropped by the 780, which becomes very annoying. The 780 does track Portland and Clark County just fine as you mentioned, and in fact does just as well with those 800 systems as the two new radios. It's too bad it couldn't be upgraded after the rebanding program.

Gordon

 

[Voyager]

How does weather compare between the 780 and 996? How many stations can you get on each?

 

[eorange]

You'd think receiver technology would have improved some in the nearly 15 years since the 780 came out!

Having owned a 780 for 10+ years...I think you'll have a hard time finding something that outperforms it on VHF and UHF.

The analog receiving technology has not improved much, if at all. Modern improvements focus on digital, P25, the UI, and memory management. The digital improvements seem to water down the analog sensitivity.

That said, my 396XT does fine on analog VHF and UHF, but it's no 780.

 

[sparklehorse]

How does weather compare between the 780 and 996? How many stations can you get on each?

You know I haven't played around with the NOAA channels for a long time because they're not usually that helpful to me. We have one local station that's very strong, and then one about 35 miles away that is also a pretty strong signal. That's all I could receive here the last time I checked. I'm sure the 996 would do well with both of those stations. I'll have to play around with the 780 when I get home and see if there's any distant stations on air now I haven't received before.

Thanks

 

[gewecke]

Having owned a 780 for 10+ years...I think you'll have a hard time finding something that outperforms it on VHF and UHF.

The analog receiving technology has not improved much, if at all. Modern improvements focus on digital, P25, the UI, and memory management. The digital improvements seem to water down the analog sensitivity.

That said, my 396XT does fine on analog VHF and UHF, but it's no 780.

Exactly what he said. ^^ The 780xlt is an EXCELLENT performer for vhf/uhf analog comms and even better yet for mil air and civilian air traffic.

73,
n9zas

 

[mikewazowski]

Thread moved to Oregon forum.

 

[sparklehorse]

Thread moved to Oregon forum.

Hello MikeOxlong,
This topic is not region-specific, so I'm not sure why my thread was moved to the Oregon forum. If it has to be moved could you please move it to the 'Skip/Tropospheric Ducting' forum? That seems a better fit for the discussion at hand.
Thank you.
Gordon

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[sparklehorse]

Thought I'd update this thread with some things I've tried that might be of interest to someone. Recall that one of the challenges I have is that I'm trying to use a rooftop antenna in a very RF intense area.

If you don't feel like reading the whole post here's a synopsis:

• The BC796D I now have is not quite as good on VHF-Hi as my BC780XLT.

• Three inline FM notch filters together did not work any better for curing de-sense issues than just one (but one is a necessity).

• The 'BPF-VHF-PN Band Pass Filter’, sold at ScannerMaster, DID CURE the VHF de-sense issues on my Whistler 1065, AND my BCD996XT.



OK, here we go:

The first thing I did since last posting to this thread was buy a BC796D on eBay.

I reasoned that its VHF performance might be as good as the 780 since it's a close relative. Posts online seemed to indicate this was a good bet. If true, I would in essence have a 780 that could track re-banded trunk systems, AND decode P-25 transmissions. Well it's close, but still no cigar. It does pretty well on VHF-Hi, but it's not as good as my 780. At least this particular unit isn't. It just doesn't pull the really weak stuff out of the mud as well as the 780 does. The sound is more harsh, for lack of a better word, with more static. I don't have the expertise or equipment to measure sensitivity electronically, but what I can do is connect up to 4 radios to my rooftop antenna simultaneously using a quality multi-coupler and identical coax jumpers. This way I can compare radios side by side on the same input signal. And my 780 is just better than this 796 on VHF-Hi Public Safety.

Next thing I tried was a second Broadcast FM notch filter, this time the one from Stridsberg Engineering. I live just a mile from a radio tower that broadcasts nine different FM stations, so I thought it might be all that intense FM RF that's de-sensing my Whistler 1065. The Stridsberg is a good filter, I'd say it's on par with the one from Par. But adding this filter inline, in addition to the Par FM filter, did not improve the VHF performance of the Whistler or my BCD996XT. I also added a Radio Shack FM trap filter, but the three filters together were not noticibly better than using just one.

Next thing I tried was the "BPF-VHF-PN Band Pass Filter" they sell at ScannerMaster. Holy Cow, I could NOT believe what a difference this filter made!! This thing turned my Whistler, which I had given up on for anything besides 800 MHz, into a respectable VHF receiver. Not QUITE as good as the 780 mind you, but very, very close. This was a HUGE improvement. It did basically the same thing for my BCD996XT, which came as a pleasant surprise. I knew something was de-sensing the Whistler, but thought the 996 was fairly immune to this issue like the older Unidens. Turns out it's not immune to de-sense, at least not in my situation.

Of course using this filter, which only passes 137-155 MHz, means whatever scanner it's used with becomes useless for anything outside that range (although it does pass up to 156.21 pretty well). So I haven't found a one-scanner solution yet, but I'm closer. If I could only determine what is desensing these radios in addition to Broadcast FM I might be able to find an appropriate notch filter, but I lack the equipment and expertise to do this. It might well be Broadcast TV as I live close to some of those towers too. Guess I could try one or two of Par's TV filters, but that could get spendy without a good outcome.

I also tried the 137-155 filter on my 780 and my 796, but didn't notice any real reception improvement on those radios. It appears they can handle the RF quite well on their own, although they do benefit a bit from the use of one FM notch filter.

Later I bought the ’BPF-VHF Band Pass Filter’, which passes 137-174 MHz. I can't really tell a difference between these two BPF filters, they work pretty much the same on the frequencies I'm trying to monitor, which range from 151.265 up to 156.21 MHz.

Anyway, I thought I'd share all this info as it might be useful to someone in a similar RF intense environment who's trying to improve the VHF performance of their radio.

Gordon

 

[mikewazowski]

Hello MikeOxlong,
This topic is not region-specific, so I'm not sure why my thread was moved to the Oregon forum. If it has to be moved could you please move it to the 'Skip/Tropospheric Ducting' forum? That seems a better fit for the discussion at hand.
Thank you.
Gordon.

You mentioned Oregon a couple of times in your posts so it looked like you might benefit from some local advice.

There's a couple of places out could go but Skip/Tropospheric ducting is not one of them.

Since it involves a few topics, I'll move it to General Scanning.

 

[nanZor]

If I could only determine what is desensing these radios in addition to Broadcast FM I might be able to find an appropriate notch filter, but I lack the equipment and expertise to do this.

Great work on using those filters, but just beware that "stacking" identical filters may not achieve anything more than just additional insertion loss, ie two "30 db" notch filters does not net you 60db notch. Perhaps only 33db with additional loss. Just something to be aware of.

While it may seem a bit fidgety at times, to help you hunt down any sources of desense, make use of the 396 and 996's "bandscope" mode:

BCD996XTBandScopeMode < UnidenMan4 < TWiki

Nope, not a true spectrum analyzer, BUT if you hunt in relatively small spectrum chunks, you'll see a number of carriers that could be the culprit, especially if they are full-time. If your upper and lower limits are small enough, you can even "roll onto them" with the vfo knob and hear them - but it is a bit sensitive to do.

Set up your bandscope for various suspect chunks and check it out. The killer carrier that desenses you should be a large vertical spike.

 

[sparklehorse]

Great work on using those filters, but just beware that "stacking" identical filters may not achieve anything more than just additional insertion loss, ie two "30 db" notch filters does not net you 60db notch. Perhaps only 33db with additional loss. Just something to be aware of.

While it may seem a bit fidgety at times, to help you hunt down any sources of desense, make use of the 396 and 996's "bandscope" mode:

BCD996XTBandScopeMode < UnidenMan4 < TWiki

Nope, not a true spectrum analyzer, BUT if you hunt in relatively small spectrum chunks, you'll see a number of carriers that could be the culprit, especially if they are full-time. If your upper and lower limits are small enough, you can even "roll onto them" with the vfo knob and hear them - but it is a bit sensitive to do.

Set up your bandscope for various suspect chunks and check it out. The killer carrier that desenses you should be a large vertical spike.

Thanks for the info. I knew that stacking two or three filters would only give marginally more signal reduction vs. a single filter. Thought I'd try it anyway just for grins. Good tip on using the Bandscope Mode! I've played with that feature a little bit, but thought it was likely too low a resolution to be useful for this purpose. However I likely did not spend enough time with it to really understand what it is capable of, so I will have to re-visit this function and see what I can learn.

Thanks!

 

[sparklehorse]

Updates

I thought I'd update this old thread as I've changed things up a bit since I last posted. In those eight or so months I've tried a some new antennas, added some inline notch filters, and added a few new radios to the collection.

The two most impressive radios are the Uniden BCD536HP, and the Yaesu FT-8800R. The 536 gets a lot of attention here at RR, so I won't go into too much detail on that radio. I know it's had its problems in the past, but my 536 has performed flawlessly, and after placing a series of Par notch filters in line (FM, TV Ch8, TV Ch10, plus two pager filters) I can say it has completely taken the place of my trusty old BC780XLT. With the filters addressing its desense issue, the sensitivity of the 536 is now nearly as good on VHF/UHF as my old 780! And the great P25 decode, the record feature, the Siren app, the almost limitless programming capacity, and the great display, all add up to a very fine radio. I really like it.

But the radio that has impressed me most is the Yaesu FT-8800R. It's an older Ham mobile now, and doesn't get discussed much here at RR outside the Ham forum, but it turns out to be a great scanner for conventional VHF/UHF Public Safety systems. It has a GREAT front end, much better than any of my Unidens. In fact I'm running it on my rooftop Discone right now, with no notch filters, and it is not suffering any desense or intermod issues at all on VHF or UHF Public Safety, or on the 2-meter or 70 cm Ham bands (a very impressive feat where I live). And the sensitivity is fantastic. It is the first radio I've owned that is superior to my BC780XLT for VHF/UHF conventional Public Safety. It just pulls in the weak signals from 70 or 80 miles away much better. Plus, it has true dual VFO's, meaning you basically have two separate radios in one. You can scan one unique set of memories on the left side of the radio, while simultaneously scanning an entirely different set on the right. If listening to two incoming signals at once is bothersome you can set the radio to always favor the audio on one side, automatically muting the other side when needed. At about $370 brand new it's not cheap by any means, but not terribly expensive either. I'd say it's a very good value.

Of course it isn't perfect. It scans fast for a Ham rig, but that's still only about 20ch/sec. It has a pretty goofy menu system that is not intuitive, it only has 10 memory banks, no way to scan more than one bank per VFO when scanning (dual VFOs and the Hyper Memory buttons help to work around this limitation), no way to lock a channel out on the fly, only six characters for your custom alpha tags, needs a 12 volt DC power supply to use at home, doesn't decode P25 or trunk track.

But these are minor quibbles really. The 8800 was designed as a mobile Ham rig after all, and serves that function well. But you don't have to be a Ham to use it as a scanner. And for pulling in those weak, far away stations it works very well indeed. Great radio!

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