Test for P25 Decode Improvement

[redburgundy]

redburgundy: you are having a receive issue, not a decode issue.

Yes, but one can speculate that changing the RF receive bandwidth might have some impact. But in this case, evidently not.

 

[RF23]

Missouri Statewide Wireless Interoperable Network (MOSWIN) Trunking System, Statewide, Missouri - Scanner Frequencies
Poplar Bluff Site – 5 bars Signal Strength
Condition before: Excellent
Condition after: Excellent

Doniphan Site – 2 bars Signal Strength
Condition before: Excellent
Condition after: Excellent

Note: FM would be displayed instead of NFM when voice was heard but within a second or two of termination of the voice transmission the FM would change to NFM and then disappear.

Preliminary Evaluation - Due the rapidly changing signal strength.
Arkansas Wireless Information Network (AWIN) Trunking System, Statewide, Multi-State - Scanner Frequencies

Hopewell Site – 0 to 3 bars Signal Strength rapidly up and down (storm front moving in)
Condition before: Both Sounded alike
Condition after: Both Sounded alike

Note: When the signal held both decoded equally well but some breakup of the audio did occasionally occur but equal on both FM and NFM. I think it is probably due to the signal going up and down rapidly but the NFM did sound a bit louder in volume.

 

[whsbuss]

Montgomery County PA Trunking System, Various, Pennsylvania - Scanner Frequencies
Site(s): East and West Simulcast
Condition before: poor
Condition after: slight improvement

 

[freqhopping]

Loudoun County Trunking System, Ashburn, Virginia - Scanner Frequencies
Simulcast
Excellent
Excellent

Crackling and popping remains on most TDMA tranmissions.



Fairfax County (Project 25) Trunking System, Fairfax, Virginia - Scanner Frequencies
Simulcast
Fair to excellent
Fair to excellent, no noticeable change


Virginia Statewide Agencies Radio System (STARS) Trunking System, Statewide, Virginia - Scanner Frequencies
Mt Weather, Fairfax, Hogback Mountain, Fork Mountain, Independent Hill
Excellent
Excellent


I adjusted the 150 band setting for STARS and the 162 band for federal.

Overall, in my experience no changes were noticed. Not even on various conventional P25 frequencies.

 

[testdummy]

Link to the system in RRDB: Hamilton County - Cincinnati Public Safety P25 Phase I APCO 25
Specific site monitored (if known): unknown
Condition before: Very Good
Condition after: Poor

Tested using 536HP. I don't know how to ID specific sites in use in this simulcast system. With NFM there's just a little garble but I think I'm hearing all I should be. I'm pretty sure it's significantly worse when changed to FM.

 

[wnjl]

Bucks County Trunking System, Solebury, Pennsylvania - Scanner Frequencies

Specific site monitored (if known): South Simulcast
Condition before: Poor
Condition after: Fair

Remarks: Changing the site modulation setting from NFM to FM made a tangible improvement on the success of decoding transmissions. However, the quality is still well behind that of the PSR-800 on the particular system. It is the only system in my area that the scanner is exhibiting this behavior on.

 

[bberns22]

System: Philadelphia (Project 25) Trunking System, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Scanner Frequencies
Philadelphia Project 25 Phase II
Zones 1&2 Simulcast
Pre: Excellent
Post: Excellent

System: Bucks County, Pennsylvania (PA) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference
Buck's County Motorola Type II SmartZone
South Simulcast
Pre: Excellent
Post: Excellent

System: Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (PA) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference
Montgomery County Motorola Type II SmartZone
East Simulcast
Pre: Excellent
Post: Excellent

System: Camden County, New Jersey (NJ) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference
Camden County Project 25 Phase II
Fire / EMS
Pre: Excellent
Post: Excellent

Antenna's: 6dB 850mhz cellular

 

[redburgundy]

Link to the system in RRDB.
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Trunking System, Various, Multi-State - Scanner Frequencies
Specific site monitored (if known). unknown; they've got a lot
Condition before:Fair to Poor
Condition after: Fair to Poor

 

[davenlr]

My 800 P25 system sounded OK, except the tone outs for fire dispatches were garbled. Switched it to FM, and the tone outs were still garbled, but the voice audio is now a little distorted sounding. Switching it back to NFM.

 

[jgeitgey]

Link to the system in RRDB. Canton/Stark County Trunking System, Canton, Ohio - Scanner Frequencies
Specific site monitored (if known). Canton/Stark County
Condition before: Excellent / Poor, Poor
Condition after: Excellent / Poor, Still Poor

Tested with the BCD536HP, changing NFM to FM made no difference

 

[jgeitgey]

Hi UPMan,
Are you saying the current firmware for the BCD536HP is 1.0.7? My current firmware shows 1.02.03 and Sentinel says the scanner is up to date.

Thanks everyone,

To make sure I understand what you checked:

Using the current released firmware (1.0.7), the P25 performance was excellent regardless of the NFM/FM setting, correct? And the results in the format I requested would have been:

Sedgwick County (Project 25) Emergency Services Radio System Trunking System, Wichita, Kansas - Scanner Frequencies
Site 1
Before: Excellent
After: Excellent

 

[rjdj2000]

Link to the system in RRDB: Cortland County Public Safety Trunking System, Cortland County, New York - Scanner Frequencies
Specific site monitored (if known):
System Name: Cortland County Public Safety
Location: Cortland County, NY
County: Cortland
System Type: Project 25 Phase I
System Voice: APCO-25 Common Air Interface Exclusive

Condition before: Good
Condition after: Good, can't tell


Video of BCD536HP starting in FM mode @ 1 minutes in I switch it over to NFM -->http://youtu.be/4pnSoAb1hOs

Note: Link for video may not work yet as it was still uploading the video as I was putting this post up. Also, this system (Cortland County Public Safety) is brand new and went 'on the air' on January 27th for which the reason I got the 536HP.
I also might have goofed on the system type as I thought all P25 Phase I systems were in 800 range, apparently not as the control channel here is in the 450 range. Video Has been redone and is active

 

[policefreak]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.1.2; en-us; LG-LS720 Build/JZO54K) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30)

Monitoring Philadelphia Public Safety P25 Phase 1 site Zone 1 (both sites are really about the same) using the BCD436HP.
http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=7141

Condition in NFM- Excellent
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dfWj6uLZ0U&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Condition in FM- Excellent-little if any difference.
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPDtwrX3H5k&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Both results were taken sitting stationary about 7 miles East of Philadelphia in Haddonfield, NJ. Weather was fair. No cell interference or other overload appeared present. I used the PSR 800 as a benchmark since it monitors well in that area. Both radios using the RS 800 rubber antenna. For comparison in the videos, the deeper sounding radio is the 436 and the higher pitch, thinner sounding radio is the PSR 800.

 

[TecEnduro9]

Virginia STARS Virginia Statewide Agencies Radio System (STARS) Trunking System, Statewide, Virginia - Scanner Frequencies
Ft Lewis Site
Before was poor trunking
After was excellent trunking

Followed with the Pro 106 perfectly.

Thank you Uniden for looking into this issue.

 

[nr2d]

Link to the system in RRDB:
Camden County Public Safety Trunking System, Camden County, New Jersey - Scanner Frequencies (P25 Phase II)

Specific site monitored (if known): Simulcast. Majority of sites

Condition before: Fair (slight distortion, crackling, some missed transmissions)
Condition after: Fair (slight distortion, crackling, some missed transmissions)

Basically the same before and after.

 

[W5RGP]

BCD536HP/BCD436HP Test for P25 Decode Improvement

Hi UPMan,

Are you saying the current firmware for the BCD536HP is 1.0.7? My current firmware shows 1.02.03 and Sentinel says the scanner is up to date.



Thanks everyone,

Mine shows the .03 also up to date


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[pepsima1]

Nope it did not help on my end. No Changes. Actually made some of my digital talkgroups not receive transmissions.

 

[Salvation]

Ocean County, New Jersey (NJ) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

Little Egg Harbor, NJ
Frequency License Type Tone Alpha Tag Description Mode Tag
506.86250 WIL285 RM 293 NAC LEHT PD 1A Police Ch. 1A P25 Law Dispatch

Condition before: Poor
Condition after: Excellent

In NFM I would miss 40% of the transmissions all together and about 90% of the initial transmissions (1-4 seconds) even when "Holding" on the channel. When I switched to FM the problem disappeared. Setting MOD to Auto now chooses FM rather than NFM after changing the Band Defaults. If I changed audio type from Digital to All, the 1-4 seconds (or the whole transmission) would be just digital static and then the audio will kick in. Set to just Digital the channel will stay quiet until clear audio came through.

 

[Roveer]

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=7494

System Name: Morris County Public Safety
Location: Morris County, NJ
County: Morris
System Type: Project 25 Phase I
System Voice: APCO-25 Common Air Interface Exclusive
Condition before: Poor
Condition after: Poor

OK, my p25 system has simucast freq's in the 477-478 range so I did the NFM to FM mod on the 470 band. No improvement whatsoever. My P25 systems sounds almost as bad as the felix baumgartner fall from space audio on youtube. I really hope we can get this figured out as its become really annoying and now my 536HP is turned off and my Pro 106 is turned back on. That's not what I expected on day 2 of 536HP ownership.

Suggestions?

Roveer

 

[John]

Virginia Statewide Agencies Radio System (STARS) Trunking System, Statewide, Virginia - Scanner Frequencies
Ft Lewis Site
Before was poor
After was excellent