Okay Vinnie, look at you... picking up Burlington County. Good pictures, easy to read even on their side.
I have made some observations from the pictures and have a couple of questions.
I am assuming you're not doing this every day and that it only happens intermittently. Looking at your RSSI and s meter you're right on the line and I'm wondering if you're even getting broken Transmissions or missed Transmissions, you wouldn't really know about the missed Transmissions because you're missing them LOL. What antenna are you using, is this the yagi?
I've also noticed something else, you have not programmed this system in a favorites list, you are simply doing a search on the database with your ZIP code. I noticed that you don't have any favorites list numbered in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
Everything I told you about applying different filters to different sites, it's not applicable here as when you search the database it will just scroll through all the sites in the system. When you say that you are on wide normal filter you are obviously referring to the global filter which is going to put every single object you listen to anywhere on wide normal.
The reason I was asking about if you were using the yagi is the only site I see in the photos is Medford (west). Believe it or not the Medford site is a little further away from the closest site to you which would be Mount Laurel except Mount Laurel is north of Medford.
So that is one heck of a mast you have and and it appears well-positioned with regards to what's around it. Forgive me but I don't remember if you had another antenna other than the yaggie.
As far as a full tutorial on the use of the filters, it's kind of premature for you on that now until you actually establish and number favorites list. Then you can leave Global filter on normal which means that will be the filter for every object that you don't go into and customize. Systems are customized by going into the individual sites and assigning a filter which would overrides the global filter. Conventional objects, you go into the department settings that that conventional object is in and change the filters in that department options overriding the global filter, unfortunately that changes the filter on all of the objects in that department but you can get around that by the way you program the department.
I'm assuming that you did not own one of the X36 series. If you did that is a great advantage as people who are familiar with the 436 and the 536 never even open the manual of the SDS radios.
It would be good to work on programming your radio using Sentinel and establishing favorites lists and numbering them. Those numbers will appear in the top row on the left top of your screen. You will be able to label your favorites list as you wish, you might want to limit each favorites list to one system like Philadelphia, Montgomery etc etc. Establishing favorites list will allow you to customize your systems especially with regard to locking out unnecessary sites, applying specific filters to specific sites, applying system hold times etc etc.
There is so much on RR that will show you exactly how to do this. You can search RR or you can even just Google it and it'll take you to the threads that will explain these things. As far as starting a favorites list your manual should be adequate. Don't worry about the second and third line on the top left of your screen. Just work on the favorites list first. Assigning them a number and naming them using Sentinel.
Just a hint, you do this in Sentinel and that's how you basically set yourself up but after you do that you can always make changes like on filters and system hold times right on the radio which for me sometimes is just easier because I do it spontaneously but... The first thing you do when you hook up to Sentinel again after making the changes is copy the data card to your configuration on your profile so as to save the changes you made manually on the radio.
Geez that was a long post. Hope it makes sense... Bob.
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