slow signal detection

[squelchtale]

My PSR500 seems to be slow detecting signals on VHF? I had it setting beside another scanner and the PSR500 kept right on scanning while the other scanner was stopped on the frequency. I shut the tone off and that helped however I can manually set on a frequency and I still miss the first word or 2 of voice such as the unit#. Is there a setting in the global area to help this. There ar some vhf freq that work fine even with the tone set to on. 154.725 and 154.190 seem worse than others. I thought I had read a thread n this but am not able to find it. Thanks

 

[scanfan03]

It might be the DG int Prime in the advanced global settings. It might be the time it takes for the radio to determine if the channel is digital or not. If so, lower the DG int Prime setting and that should help. If you have no digital in your area you should be able to lower to 15 like I have mine for the houston area.

 

[TheReaper]

I have the same problem with mine. My pro-164 works flawlessly. It’s petty frustrating.

 

[scanfan03]

I have the same problem with mine. My pro-164 works flawlessly. It’s petty frustrating.

Try the setting I mentioned above.

 

[squelchtale]

Im not sure where to find the setting. I found a digital detect timeout setting in the win500 software? is that it? Also what kinf of battery life are you getting out of rechargable nicads? Im getting about 5 hours at best. Is this the norm? Thanks for the help....

 

[thewenk]

See this thread for a discussion on advance settings:
http://www.radioreference.com/forums/showthread.php?t=86314

and see this nice table of advanced settings referenced in the above thread:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pJ4HPyKG38v1IamIGWMrKFw

Dave

 

[scanfan03]

Im not sure where to find the setting. I found a digital detect timeout setting in the win500 software? is that it? Also what kinf of battery life are you getting out of rechargable nicads? Im getting about 5 hours at best. Is this the norm? Thanks for the help....

I'm getting about 12 hours from Energizer 2500 Mah batteries. Which quite frankly is abismal compared to the BC246T or Pro-95 (but I guess those aren't digital scanners so they really don't compare).

 

[TheReaper]

Im not sure where to find the setting. I found a digital detect timeout setting in the win500 software? is that it? Also what kinf of battery life are you getting out of rechargable nicads? Im getting about 5 hours at best. Is this the norm? Thanks for the help....

Yes, that's the setting "Digital detect timeout".

 

[bneilson]

I was also having this issue on trunked systems.

This also resolved it there for me. I set my "Digital Detect Timeout" to 20.

Thanks guys!

 

[TheReaper]

I hate to bump an old thread, but I’m still having problems. I have my digital detect timeout set to “10ms”, and all my squelch modes set to “search”. These settings seem to have little to no effect. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[TheReaper]

Anyone? Please!

 

[PHOENIX_SCANNER]

Wild Chance

I have noticed the same issue to an extent, but to get every transmission to stop scanning I just dial the squelch as far down as I can and call it good. These radios do not have the ears of a Pro-2006 for example, but what new scanner does? So I consider it in the grand scheme of things and forget about it with only one agency to really hear on VHF with squelch codes these days.

How about an antenna to target this range? I know, you may already be getting a good signal, but why not try? I have noticed that having a tuned antenna eliminates issues even though the signal may have already been a good strength with the old antenna.

If I were you and had a mast or tower to mount to, I would buy the following antenna and adjust it for the center or your required frequency range.

http://www.antennawarehouse.com/VHF-UHF/AWH-150.htm

I suspect it could help greatly, and would probably still work ok on uhf and still get strong 800 mhz signals. If not, you can always try the diamond 210 switch I use when you must have two different antennas hooked up to one scanner and be able to switch back and forth.

As frustrating as it may seem, you can always pick up a 2004, 2006, and sometimes a 2005 off ebay for around $100, and you can hook up a tone board. These radios are just the best with vhf as far as I am concerned. A slightly cheaper choice which doesn't do quite as well with intermod but is better on vhf than today's radios, is the BC9000XLT which can be had with tone board and has alphas, or the BC898 which has built in ctcss, but no alphas. These are the last of a dying breed of radios which still did an great job on vhf.

It seems in the radios of today, this capability is secondary at best, to 800mhz reception & digital decoding.

 

[Mike_G_D]

slow signal demod

This was discussed way back - I can't seem to locate the thread but it does, as has been mentioned, have to do with the digital mode detection. The default is to try and see if the signal being received is digital APCO-25 format and that takes a little time. So you mis the first few syllables. If you set the mode for the channel you want to tone search then I think you should find no more missed beginnings of transmissions (relative to when in the transmission the scanner stopped on the frequency, of course). This is discussed in detail on the GRE website at http://www.greamerica.com/support/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=10.

In short, if you know that there are no digital transmissions on the frequencies of interest then set the mode to CTCSS or DCS and, if you don't know the tone or there is no CTCSS or DCS tone then set the CTCSS or DCS mode to search. By doing this you will kill the digital detector since digital signals do not use CTCSS or DCS tones.

It has nothing to do with the receiver sensitivity.

-Mike