bubbatex
Member
I'm located just beyond southeast Houston and monitor Houston Police and Fire on the Houston General Government Services Simulcast site of TxWarn P25. Like many others who have posted here, I'm experiencing severe multipath distortion in my reception. I'd estimate less than 20% of the transmissions are "clear," and even when I travel closer into the city, this does not improve much.
Note that when the system was first introduced in May 2013, I was unable to even receive much traffic because the signal was too weak on the stock broadband scanner antenna. By replacing the antenna with an 800 MHz one, I now get up to four bars of reception, but the multipath distortion is still a big issue.
It seems strange to me that the city would have implemented a simulcast system with multiple transmitters using the same frequency, since the target audience for this P25 Phase 1 site consists of interests such as news media, wrecker drivers, scanner enthusiasts, etc. who use off-the-shelf scanning equipment that does not deal with multipath distortion very well. Does anyone know if the city has plans to replace or add a system that is more scanner-friendly?
Note that when the system was first introduced in May 2013, I was unable to even receive much traffic because the signal was too weak on the stock broadband scanner antenna. By replacing the antenna with an 800 MHz one, I now get up to four bars of reception, but the multipath distortion is still a big issue.
It seems strange to me that the city would have implemented a simulcast system with multiple transmitters using the same frequency, since the target audience for this P25 Phase 1 site consists of interests such as news media, wrecker drivers, scanner enthusiasts, etc. who use off-the-shelf scanning equipment that does not deal with multipath distortion very well. Does anyone know if the city has plans to replace or add a system that is more scanner-friendly?