Phila. area and scanners question

[cdavisjr]

So here's my dilemma group. For as long as I've been in the scanning hobby minus my first scanner which was a Radio Shack (never again) I've always had Unidens and have been more than happy with them, first the 250D and now the 396T but I hear a lot about the 396XT and I hear a lot about how the future of systems is trending towards one's like the eventual new philly one and those only the PSR-800 currently does if I'm correct so....should I upgrade to the 396XT for now whether new or used and pray that Uniden catches up in the game persay and switch when I have to or go and make new friends now with GRE who I'm sure is a fine company just one I've never dealt with.

 

[cdavisjr]

In response to private messages I got almost instantly after posting, I want to clarify that I live in Conshohocken and am currently programmed to Montco 800 East FD/EMS/PD for my area, Chester in any form you can and Philly in their old system and trying to in the future listen to whatever 800 systems Chester, Montgomery and Philly(for when I go to the city) switch to.

 

[pdw911]

It depends how long you want to wait for a technology upgrade

GRE is apparently out of or going out of scanner business in US..their latesthandheld PSR 800 will handle most of what you want in this geographical area...but there are questions about longevity and support

RS- I understand gets their boxes from GRE (I might be wrong here)...If so who knows what their future will be

Uniden- 396XT and 996XT will do the local stuff...now. Phila switched to P25 last week...when Phase II is complete, they will use TDMA modulation which only the PSR 800 will handle for now...Uniden released a firmware update for the 396 to help with the P25 LSM issues...a bunch of us are waiting for the 996XT fix...but for now you can monitor Phil P25

The legacy Chester County system is a mess to scan...they just announced a contract to upgrade to Harris MultiNET System..It will be some time befor it is finalized and I am sorry..I don't know what brands handle that system...some one can chime in here

Uniden will probably do something about TDMA but it is unknown when or what....another firmware (??) or new box

it's worse than computers...you are almost obsolete when you buy one

 

[soberbyker]

It depends how long you want to wait for a technology upgrade

GRE is apparently out of or going out of scanner business in US..their latesthandheld PSR 800 will handle most of what you want in this geographical area...but there are questions about longevity and support

RS- I understand gets their boxes from GRE (I might be wrong here)...If so who knows what their future will be

Uniden- 396XT and 996XT will do the local stuff...now. Phila switched to P25 last week...when Phase II is complete, they will use TDMA modulation which only the PSR 800 will handle for now...Uniden released a firmware update for the 396 to help with the P25 LSM issues...a bunch of us are waiting for the 996XT fix...but for now you can monitor Phil P25

The legacy Chester County system is a mess to scan...they just announced a contract to upgrade to Harris MultiNET System..It will be some time befor it is finalized and I am sorry..I don't know what brands handle that system...some one can chime in here

Uniden will probably do something about TDMA but it is unknown when or what....another firmware (??) or new box

it's worse than computers...you are almost obsolete when you buy one

From what I understand, the ability to listen to a TDMA system is a hardware related issue, not software, meaning a firmware update would not work for any scanner currently on the market outside the PSR800.
.

 

[soberbyker]

It depends how long you want to wait for a technology upgrade

GRE is apparently out of or going out of scanner business in US..their latesthandheld PSR 800 will handle most of what you want in this geographical area...but there are questions about longevity and support

RS- I understand gets their boxes from GRE (I might be wrong here)...If so who knows what their future will be

Uniden- 396XT and 996XT will do the local stuff...now. Phila switched to P25 last week...when Phase II is complete, they will use TDMA modulation which only the PSR 800 will handle for now...Uniden released a firmware update for the 396 to help with the P25 LSM issues...a bunch of us are waiting for the 996XT fix...but for now you can monitor Phil P25

The legacy Chester County system is a mess to scan...they just announced a contract to upgrade to Harris MultiNET System..It will be some time befor it is finalized and I am sorry..I don't know what brands handle that system...some one can chime in here

Uniden will probably do something about TDMA but it is unknown when or what....another firmware (??) or new box

it's worse than computers...you are almost obsolete when you buy one

GRE America, Inc. - Powered By Kayako SupportSuite

GRE Official Announcement 10/23/2012

October 23, 2012


To our valued Dealers and Customers,

Due to circumstances beyond its control, General Research of Electronics of Japan (GRE)
is temporarily not able to manufacture the GRECOM and Radio Shack branded radio scanners.

The Chinese Government’s plan to redevelop the area where the GRE factory had been in
operation for over ten years finally forced its closure. Anticipating this eventuality,
GRE was in the process of building a new factory but unfortunately the cost of raw materials,
labor and increased taxes created a heavy financial investment burden that could not be
effectively recovered.

GRE America continues to market, support and service the GRECOM branded scanners and is
contractually committed to keep the Library Database updated and current. GRE America
will continue to market, service and support Alinco’s radio products without any interruption.

We sincerely apologize for this unfortunate turn of events. GRE is proceeding to establish
a contract with a new factory and believes it will be able to restart the manufacturing in
the near future.


For continued sales, service and support, please contact the GRE America office.

Raj Gounder
Director of sales
GRE America, Inc.

 

[cdavisjr]

Thank you again to everyone for their thoughts and comments. Sounds like my best bet is to upgrade to the 396xt and enjoy it and whats in it while I can and hope that uniden puts something new out....has anyone heard about anything confirmed coming out even if it's not right away or in the testing phase?

 

[cdavisjr]

I'm wondering about the opitmal settings to have my 396T on for listening to 800 around here, mainly montco before they change and still have phila's old system which will be changed to the new system. I read the manual and am still a little fuzzy on some setting uses and figured better posting this in here than another forum where I get scanner answers but not from people with same experiences from my own area so here's what I got. I use the 396T and after back to manufac. settings reloaded my info, did the uniden.com firmware settings and montco 800 sounds a lot better.
Data Skip: off
Channel Delay Time:not on
System Hold Time:2 seconds
Apco 25 Threshold:Auto and 8 (manual says 8 is default setting)
I-call:turned on
Attenuator:turned off
End Code:yes - detect
Status Bit:turned on
CC Only:no
Motorola Digital End Code:yes
Mode: fm not auto
AGC is on for digital and analog

 

[troymail]

Thank you again to everyone for their thoughts and comments. Sounds like my best bet is to upgrade to the 396xt and enjoy it and whats in it while I can and hope that uniden puts something new out....has anyone heard about anything confirmed coming out even if it's not right away or in the testing phase?

If you're really interested in listening to the Philadelphia system - which is showing as a P25 Phase 2 system here on RR - you may not want to jump on a 396XT.

Sure, Uniden has released firmware updates to improve the LSM reception issues but the 396 XT does not and (from everything that has been said here on RR) - won't ever be able to do Phase 2.

From the posts I've read here, it sounds like the Philly system may still be monitorable because most of the radios on the system are still only Phase 1 but once the transition begins to occur (probably slowly phasing in), you may/will probably notice that the amount you can hear will start to decline.

Phase 1 and Phase 2 radios can coexist on the Phase 2 system but unless you have a PSR800 the only time you'll hear activity is when there is at least 1 Phase 1 radio active on the TG. If all radios on a given TG are Phase 2 radios, you won't hear anything - unless you have a PSR800.

 

[troymail]

BTW - the Philly system is listed on RR as 2 zone - "Zone 1" and "Zone 2" -- does anyone know yet if these zones map to certain areas - like "north" or "south", etc and/or where the boundaries are for the 2 zones?

 

[jessek14]

BTW - the Philly system is listed on RR as 2 zone - "Zone 1" and "Zone 2" -- does anyone know yet if these zones map to certain areas - like "north" or "south", etc and/or where the boundaries are for the 2 zones?

Zone 1 would be fire department and all other city services, while zone 2 is almost entirely police.

The North and South boundaries are for the fire department, and I believe its north and south of market street.

 

[phillydjdan]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.5; en-us; ZTE-N910 Build/GRJ90) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

Fire boundary is Lehigh Ave, and only seperates the deputy chief area and which fire band is used.

 

[SuperPuma]

BTW - the Philly system is listed on RR as 2 zone - "Zone 1" and "Zone 2" -- does anyone know yet if these zones map to certain areas - like "north" or "south", etc and/or where the boundaries are for the 2 zones?

There are no physical boundaries for Zone 1 or 2.

They both cover the entire city side by side.

The difference is Zone 2 mainly handles all of the police traffic which is busier & has more voice frequencies.

Zone 1 covers the fire department & all other city agencies on the 800 system.

 

[cdavisjr]

sounds like if I don't mind spending the money for the people not yet going to the phase systems (I'll just leave it at that) and for conventional stuff the 396XT is a nice upgrade over the 396T....and the PSR800 is the only one out there that will scan the future in radio system technolgy, comes preprogrammd with the world, is also world downloadable but is also able to be hand programmed down to the specific freq's I want?.....with alpha tagging?....but I might scream every once in awhile doing it that way....do I have it about right so far?