SDS100 & Portland (P25)

[Dreamflight767]

Anyone get one? How's it doing (specifically compared to the 436)?

Thanks.

 

[OregonScanner]

Mine will arrive late next week. I will post how it does once I get it up and running.

 

[Dreamflight767]

Great! Thanks for sharing.

 

[V_A_R_I_A_B_L_E]

Mine just showed up today, now scanning with ZERO simulcast distortion from the Woodstock neighborhood. I also run the Broadcastify PPB East feed, which is still plagued with horrible distortion from the same location.

(Side note, if anyone has had luck with getting RTL-SDRs to work on P25 around here, I could use some suggestions to fix this feed that has basically become useless since the analog system was shut off.)

 

[Dreamflight767]

Thanks for the update!

 

[OregonScanner]

I got mine the other day. Portland west simulcast sounds great. Its a night and day difference on Portland's simulcast compared to the 436HP. I was having some issues at first with the scanner missing short transmissions or having late entry to transmissions already in progress and the state Harris system would not decode any audio it would just hang on every talkgroup. With the SDS100 you can program in P25 NAC codes on a per site basis so I programmed in the NACs for Portland's P25 and the state system and now it seems like its working properly.

I just now noticed a possible bug on UHF analog. The SDS100 would not stop and would completely skip all traffic on Yamhill County's UHF frequencies with the 97.4 PL tone programmed in. If I manually hold on one of the frequencies then it sounds fine. If I disable the PL tones and set the frequencies to CSQ then the scanner scans those freqs just fine. I can just barely get Skamania County Washington's UHF with their 4-digit PL tones. Yesterday while driving to work I was listening to Salem PD UHF with 192.8 PL in Newberg. Maybe there is a bug where the radio doesn't like 3 digit PL tones but 4-digit seems to work. This is happening both at home and while mobile. UHF DMR with color codes works.

Aside from that bug so far I'm impressed.

 

[Dreamflight767]

Thank you for that report. I'm a little confused though. You say you programmed the P25 NAC codes, but I didn't think the Portland P25 had NAC.

What am I missing?

Appreciate it.

 

[OregonScanner]

Trunked P25 has NACs just like conventional P25 its just until now you could only program in NACs on conventional frequencies. In the new Sentinel software you now get the option to set NACs for trunked sites too. Portland/Multnomah County P25 sites use NAC 3C0.

Knock on wood. After I typed my earlier post yesterday afternoon I headed off to work with my SDS100 in the car and it was suffering from late entry on the Portland P25 system again and it refused to decode any audio from the state P25 system. But on the positive side the Yamhill County UHF freqs worked with PL enabled lol. So much for my PL bug theory.

On the way back home this morning about 2AM the SDS100 worked great on the UHF analog, the Portland P25 system sounded a little better, and the state Phase II Harris P25 system would decode bits and pieces but it still struggled a lot.

I get the best performance at home with a Diamond RH77CA but most of the issues I have are in the car with a larsen Tri-Band. Other reports in other threads say that its kind of a hot reciever so maybe its just picking up interference every now and then. They did release a beta firmware for P25 reception so I think I'll try that out for a couple of days and see how it goes.

 

[jonwienke]

Thank you for that report. I'm a little confused though. You say you programmed the P25 NAC codes, but I didn't think the Portland P25 had NAC.

You can't transmit P25 without a NAC. It's part of the spec, like color code for DMR, or RAN for NXDN.

 

[UPMan]

We added NAC to trunked system because some scanner listening posts, while being outside the target area for two different P25 systems can actually receive both systems...and when those systems reuse frequencies used on the other it can cause the scanner to stop on incorrect comms (i.e. scanning system A but hearing TG on system B shared frequency). Adding the NAC eliminates this, as if the NAC doesn't match, the scanner returns to the scanned control channel.

 

[rosecitytransit]

Mine just showed up today, now scanning with ZERO simulcast distortion from the Woodstock neighborhood. I also run the Broadcastify PPB East feed, which is still plagued with horrible distortion from the same location.

(Side note, if anyone has had luck with getting RTL-SDRs to work on P25 around here, I could use some suggestions to fix this feed that has basically become useless since the analog system was shut off.)

How do you have the feed set up? When I try to listen to the Portland system using UniTrunker and DSD+ or the DSD+ trunking mode, audio is almost completely garbled. When I listen using SDRTrunk, the audio is fine 99% of the time, but I'm not sure how to listen to just one talkgroup. I can get it mute certain ones but not skip them.

 

[V_A_R_I_A_B_L_E]

How do you have the feed set up? When I try to listen to the Portland system using UniTrunker and DSD+ or the DSD+ trunking mode, audio is almost completely garbled. When I listen using SDRTrunk, the audio is fine 99% of the time, but I'm not sure how to listen to just one talkgroup. I can get it mute certain ones but not skip them.

I've tried Unitrunker/DSD+, and it's now currently running with DSD+ (fastlane) CC and VC. The old WinXP laptop I use to provide the feed seems incapable of running SDRTrunk. Everytime I start it, the program runs, and according to both the task manager, and apparent performance, just starts eating memory at a faster and faster rate until it crashes, rendering it unusable. Maybe with the SDS100 taking off, demand for Unications will drop and they'll get cheap enough to snag one just to dedicate it to the feed, but I'd much rather get the SDRs to work, since they theoretically should be perfectly capable of sampling I/Q and eliminating LSM distortion.

 

[Dreamflight767]

Trunked P25 has NACs just like conventional P25 its just until now you could only program in NACs on conventional frequencies. In the new Sentinel software you now get the option to set NACs for trunked sites too. Portland/Multnomah County P25 sites use NAC 3C0.

Knock on wood. After I typed my earlier post yesterday afternoon I headed off to work with my SDS100 in the car and it was suffering from late entry on the Portland P25 system again and it refused to decode any audio from the state P25 system. But on the positive side the Yamhill County UHF freqs worked with PL enabled lol. So much for my PL bug theory.

On the way back home this morning about 2AM the SDS100 worked great on the UHF analog, the Portland P25 system sounded a little better, and the state Phase II Harris P25 system would decode bits and pieces but it still struggled a lot.

I get the best performance at home with a Diamond RH77CA but most of the issues I have are in the car with a larsen Tri-Band. Other reports in other threads say that its kind of a hot reciever so maybe its just picking up interference every now and then. They did release a beta firmware for P25 reception so I think I'll try that out for a couple of days and see how it goes.

Interesting, I did not know that about the P25 system. How did you find the 3C0 NAC?

 

[KC7VH]

I picked up my SDS100 yesterday from Ham Radio Outlet and am pretty impressed so far. It is quite a step up from my old 996XT. It took awhile to figure out why I was not hearing the Fire Ops channels but then finally realized I needed to enable the proper Service Types. It is now working well on the Portland P25 system (much better than the old 996XT) and it's also working great on the State's P25 system.

 

[k-9policexj]

SDS100

Still waiting for more reviews before I drop that much on a scanner.... I can't complain about the Unication G5. One of the better receivers imo.

 

[OregonScanner]

Here's my updated review:

The good:

Beta firmware appears to really help with late entries and missed traffic on P25 trunked. At home on the desk with a Diamond RH77CA antenna or an 800 Mhz antenna this radio is sounds great.

The not so good:

I took a trip down I-5 to Eugene today with my SDS100 connected to a Larsen Tri-Band mobile antenna attached to a mag mount. My SDS100 suffered from quite a bit of intermod the whole way down I-5. I had a huge amount of intermod on VHF that I've never heard before. Marion County Central 1, North 6 and Salem's 800 analog sounded bad while driving through Salem. I heard all sorts of white noise, squeals, and pops coming through while it was getting voice traffic. I think all the cell towers along I-5 were overloading the radio. Not on every frequency, but on enough to where I noticed something was amiss.

While driving between Albany and Eugene there was one instance where I was listening to a Linn County Sheriff VHF freq while driving by a cell tower just off of I-5 and the audio started squealing really loud and it increased the closer I got to the cell tower. It was so loud that I reached down and pressed the menu button to silence the radio until I drove a little way passed the cell tower.

During the trip I only got traffic on the state 700 system while driving from Newberg to St. Paul on Hwy 219 which is away from a lot of RF and a few transmissions between Enchanted Forest south of Salem and the Santiam River. Other than that the SDS100 just wouldn't decode any audio on the state system.

It just appears to really overload when connected to a mobile antenna. Or maybe it just doesn't like my car. I've never had this with my 436HP, 536HP, or 325P2. This is a big issue for me since I do the majority of my scanning while mobile.

Like I said, the radio does great on my desk with a rubber duckie but in my car not so much.

If you want to just listen at home with a rubber duckie then the SDS100 would be a great option. If you want to drive around and listen to all sorts of different radio systems then maybe hold off for a while.

Still have my 436HP and G5 if nothing else.

How did you find the 3C0 NAC?

With the SDS100 it shows trunking NAC, Color Code, or RAN on the screen instead of just on conventional frequencies like the earlier models. You can scan the voice frequencies in conventional mode in any P25 scanner with digital set to search and it should also show the NAC.

 

[Dreamflight767]

Thanks for the update. Yea, I figured I'd wait a few months to get one. My scanner does stay home, doesn't travel. I'll be hooking it up to my ST2 which is my attic.

 

[sparklehorse]

<snip>

It just appears to really overload when connected to a mobile antenna. Or maybe it just doesn't like my car. I've never had this with my 436HP, 536HP, or 325P2. This is a big issue for me since I do the majority of my scanning while mobile.

<snip>

Have you tried using the SDS100 mobile sitting in a cup holder with a just ducky antenna on it? Maybe it’s that good? My G5 when mobile sure does a good job on Portland P25 just sitting on the passenger seat.

.

 

[OregonScanner]

I didn't try that. Since my 436HP and my G5 meet my needs for now I went ahead and called ScannerMaster and got an RMA and sent it back.

 

[Dreamflight767]

You're sending your new scanner back!?