Closer to buying digital scanner, need advice

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iMONITOR

Silent Key
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It depends on how close you are to towers and how many are nearby. simulcast is greatly reduced if one of the towers you are picking up overpowers another. This is fairly typical of people in busy simulcast areas or those that do not have a tower close by that they are getting a strong signal from.

Like real estate, location, location, location! Macomb County's simulcast system had 9 sites and they recently added another 4 or 5, not sure at the moment. Most of them are all around me and several of them just about the same distance. I'm not certain why I've been so lucky for about 18 years in this location with just about any scanner. When they first enabled simulcast it wasn't great but as more towers went up the worse it became. However I recall some of the techs discussing the problems being related to a timing issue between sites. Macomb County's radio techs are some of best available and with a lot of tweaking things it suddenly really cleared up and has remained like that for year and years. I use my scanners in my office, with indoor antennas and less seems to work better. One has a Comet Miracle Baby, one is using a Diamond RH77CA, and sometimes I use a Diamond D220R. My BCT15X (not digital) is using a D.P. Productions MilTenna Omni. Life is good!

Some conditions that may be helping is I have good elevation, a 120' long row of long-needle pine trees on one side of my home, a cold air return air duct inside the wall right behind my scanners, a large double-walled steel computer tower 2-1/2' to the right of my scanners and a 4-drawer steel file cabinet in one corner of my office, as well as aluminum mini-blinds closed, about 10' from the front of all my scanners. So I guess you could say I have a selective Faraday Cage!
 

n1oty

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Taunton, Ma
Although I am from Mass, I am always mobile in RI with my SDS100 and GPS based scanning. I never owned the 996P2, so cannot comment on it. I can say that my SDS100 has been bulletproof on RISCON.

John
 

TailGator911

Silent Key/KF4ANC
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Feb 12, 2005
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2,687
Location
Fairborn, OH
Like real estate, location, location, location! Macomb County's simulcast system had 9 sites and they recently added another 4 or 5, not sure at the moment. Most of them are all around me and several of them just about the same distance. I'm not certain why I've been so lucky for about 18 years in this location with just about any scanner. When they first enabled simulcast it wasn't great but as more towers went up the worse it became. However I recall some of the techs discussing the problems being related to a timing issue between sites. Macomb County's radio techs are some of best available and with a lot of tweaking things it suddenly really cleared up and has remained like that for year and years. I use my scanners in my office, with indoor antennas and less seems to work better. One has a Comet Miracle Baby, one is using a Diamond RH77CA, and sometimes I use a Diamond D220R. My BCT15X (not digital) is using a D.P. Productions MilTenna Omni. Life is good!

Some conditions that may be helping is I have good elevation, a 120' long row of long-needle pine trees on one side of my home, a cold air return air duct inside the wall right behind my scanners, a large double-walled steel computer tower 2-1/2' to the right of my scanners and a 4-drawer steel file cabinet in one corner of my office, as well as aluminum mini-blinds closed, about 10' from the front of all my scanners. So I guess you could say I have a selective Faraday Cage!

I've never looked at my radio room in that regard. Interesting. I have been blessed with a locational sweet spot when it comes to pulling in signal in my shack with minimal interference. Diamond discone and a directional yagi 30-ft high fed into Stridsberg multi-couplers and branched out to all the scanners. When I play around with location and range and distant signals I can hear counties 40-some miles away, albeit with a little static, and on my SDS's when I implement the IFX filter the static all but disappears. I kick my heels at the fact that my location seems to be a sweet one. I have all kinds of RF around me, cell phone towers and I am only a mile or so outside the main gate of a big military base, but I deal with little to no interference here. Yup, life is good!

JD
kf4anc
 

KK4JUG

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GA
It depends on how close you are to towers and how many are nearby. simulcast is greatly reduced if one of the towers you are picking up overpowers another. This is fairly typical of people in busy simulcast areas or those that do not have a tower close by that they are getting a strong signal from.
That was my case with my 436. The city has 3 towers for 110 square miles of relatively flat land. I spent most of my listening time within a half mile or so of one of the towers so I had few problems with the simulcast. If I moved around the city, there were problems. The SDS100 solved that.
 

bondsquad

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May 9, 2010
Messages
15
I started out in the same place as you did, returning to scanning years later in a new locale with digital trunking that I had never dealt with before. It sounds like you’re interested in real “scanning” and exploring different agencies and listening for new things. If that’s the case—and your P25 does have simulcast issues—then everything I’ve learned over the past 3 months from combing these boards and Facebook groups suggests that the SDS models are definitively your best option. There doesn’t appear to be anything else with the technology to deal with simulcast that can do all the usual things that a scanner with coverage over multiple bands can do.

If you’re interested in specific areas for which you would likely program everything in and don’t need the ability to do the kind of exploratory scanning you might with a regular scanner, though, I would suggest at least looking at a Unication G5 “pager”. It’s commercial grade and the closest device to a professional use portable radio that I’ve ever used, both in terms of how well it functions and its physical design. (It’s waterproof for example, and has the kind of touch-and-feel details you expect from a professional device.) I’m not an expert so I won’t try to explain everything about it but if you don’t need all the flexibility of a real “scanner” I strongly recommend at least reading about the G5 elsewhere on these forums.
 

darkness975

Latrodectus
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The commenters on those videos were overall pretty unfair to the scanners. It's not like simulcast was ALWAYS a problem and the development of new scanners (i.e. the SDS series) is an evolutionary response to the evolution of the airwaves.
 

darkness975

Latrodectus
Premium Subscriber
Joined
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Messages
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I've never looked at my radio room in that regard. Interesting. I have been blessed with a locational sweet spot when it comes to pulling in signal in my shack with minimal interference. Diamond discone and a directional yagi 30-ft high fed into Stridsberg multi-couplers and branched out to all the scanners. When I play around with location and range and distant signals I can hear counties 40-some miles away, albeit with a little static, and on my SDS's when I implement the IFX filter the static all but disappears. I kick my heels at the fact that my location seems to be a sweet one. I have all kinds of RF around me, cell phone towers and I am only a mile or so outside the main gate of a big military base, but I deal with little to no interference here. Yup, life is good!

JD
kf4anc

I wish I could hear Hartford County (CT) from where I am, but my location being in a valleyish topography area, heavily wooded, and currently no outdoor antenna = Not a Chance.
 
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