I have had a Pro-18 for about two years and it had been working fine, or so I thought, anyway.
Recently my local law enforcement agency switched from EDACS to P25 and disappeared from the air. I checked the pages here and found out about the conversion, downloaded the latest database, and made a new playlist. I imported the new systems, added talkgroup wildcards to every system just in case, and got nothing. Dead air. I can hear conventional signals and WX, but nothing more.
There is a military base close by running a separate P25 system. They had long been in my original scanlist but I had never heard them. I figured I was out of range. I recently picked up a Pro-197 and finally got around to programming the thing. It's a different program (ARC 500), but the same database (445). I performed the same basic programming steps on the Pro-197, and I am receiving almost constant traffic from the base's P25 system. The Pro-18 still hears nothing.
I'm not getting much from the LE P25 net from the Pro-197, just an occasional weak transmission, but I am on the very edge of their range now. They used to use an antenna about 2 miles away and I could hear everything. The new antenna is just over 20 miles away. I'll need a Yagi to pull that in. I do see the TGID's and Alpha tags, so I am sure the 197 is decoding properly.
Just to make sure he base wasn't out of the Pro-18's range, I drove down to the base with it running and still heard nothing. They never stop talking for more than a minute or two at most, so there must be something wrong with the Pro-18. Or with my programming.
The scanner had been programmed by the manager at the (now defunct) local Radio Shack. Given that it has never managed to receive any P25 from the base, he may have programmed it incorrectly too.
I checked for CPU upgrades and I was current. My DSP version is 1.3 but the update site is still holding 1.1.
Has anyone gotten the 1.3 DSP software to decode P25? Is the 1.1 DSP software published because 1.3 is broken?
Have I missed a step or a hidden setting somewhere? I've been using the manual at Mark's Scanners and I think I have done everything I am supposed to have done.
I am hoping that both I and the manager missed something that more experienced users may know how to correct.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Recently my local law enforcement agency switched from EDACS to P25 and disappeared from the air. I checked the pages here and found out about the conversion, downloaded the latest database, and made a new playlist. I imported the new systems, added talkgroup wildcards to every system just in case, and got nothing. Dead air. I can hear conventional signals and WX, but nothing more.
There is a military base close by running a separate P25 system. They had long been in my original scanlist but I had never heard them. I figured I was out of range. I recently picked up a Pro-197 and finally got around to programming the thing. It's a different program (ARC 500), but the same database (445). I performed the same basic programming steps on the Pro-197, and I am receiving almost constant traffic from the base's P25 system. The Pro-18 still hears nothing.
I'm not getting much from the LE P25 net from the Pro-197, just an occasional weak transmission, but I am on the very edge of their range now. They used to use an antenna about 2 miles away and I could hear everything. The new antenna is just over 20 miles away. I'll need a Yagi to pull that in. I do see the TGID's and Alpha tags, so I am sure the 197 is decoding properly.
Just to make sure he base wasn't out of the Pro-18's range, I drove down to the base with it running and still heard nothing. They never stop talking for more than a minute or two at most, so there must be something wrong with the Pro-18. Or with my programming.
The scanner had been programmed by the manager at the (now defunct) local Radio Shack. Given that it has never managed to receive any P25 from the base, he may have programmed it incorrectly too.
I checked for CPU upgrades and I was current. My DSP version is 1.3 but the update site is still holding 1.1.
Has anyone gotten the 1.3 DSP software to decode P25? Is the 1.1 DSP software published because 1.3 is broken?
Have I missed a step or a hidden setting somewhere? I've been using the manual at Mark's Scanners and I think I have done everything I am supposed to have done.
I am hoping that both I and the manager missed something that more experienced users may know how to correct.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.