396XT with decode errors

Status
Not open for further replies.

kruser

Active Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
4,987
Location
West St Louis County, MO
Wonder where abouts your staying in Will Co, IL, i live here also and use T101,T102 and T113 for Starcom and they work and decode fine on my 396Xt-996XT and RS197 base....My 996XT was perfect on T101-Dupage Co till they just added 4 more sites now up to seven and that screwed up the decoding....So i now feel the pain of DDan, my RS 197 digitals still decode T101 very well....I think Uniden scanners and GRE/RS digitals work different on different systems around the country...I had a GRE500 and sold it, it would not decode any tower, it was real bad....???

I wish I could still receive some of the Starcom sites here. I'm a tad too far west though.
I used to be able to receive sites 301 and 305 but they went off air over a year ago so I'm SOL for starcom. I can still barely hear site 359 but not enough signal to decode anything. I should try again now that all the trees are bare.
 

kbehning

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
120
Location
Eastern Iowa
Wonder where abouts your staying in Will Co, IL,

Was south of van dyke and lockport st. 396xt with Rat Shack 800 MHz antenna, or in the vehicle with external Rat Shack mag mount cell phone antenna, neither decoded the digital very well. Seemed like some talkgroups came through better than others. I ended up focusing on Joliet Moto and Will Co EDACS, as well as the chicago feed on radioreference overnight. The actual Harris radios or whatever brand they are must have some pretty good software in there to resolve the multipath issues.
 

blutarsky

Member
Joined
Apr 4, 2005
Messages
33
Location
texas
i'm in essentially the same boat here -- i just got a 396xt which i've programmed for my area (which in itself took a while to understand, but i think i'm good now). i'm near houston, connecting to the txwarn p25 system. the site in my county is listed as a "5-site simulcast" (P25 LSM - CQPSK) and unfortunately it's all but useless to me when using this site. there's extreme times of silence and when something does break through, it's all garbled. i've gone a few years without having a scanner since they made the change to digital, so now that i've finally gotten this new scanner, it's very very disheartening to be having these issues.

there are a number of other sites in my general area, in neighboring counties, which are not simulcast. interestingly enough, if i connect to the next closest one, i don't seem to have any of these issues with garbled or choppy voice, but i also seem to be missing quite a lot since there's mostly silence. when i do hear stuff it's pretty clear.

for reference, the system i'm connecting to is Texas Wide Area Radio Network (TxWARN) -- the Montgomery County Simulcast site is the simulcast one which is all choppy and garbled, and the site which sounds pretty good but SEEMS to be missing too much is Tomball.

as for antennas, i've used the antenna included with the radio, a radioshack 800mhz using the included bnc adapter, as well as a diamond rh77ca also using the adapter -- i get similar results across the board. the thing that bothers me is that, although when i'm able to connect to the tomball site, i seem to not be hearing nearly enough as it should be a really busy system (and no, i'm not limiting to just my programmed talk groups) so i think i'm missing a LOT, even when it seems to be working on that site.

i've tried changing settings and all to no avail -- am i just essentially screwed? i'd really hate to have to return this scanner, as it otherwise seems pretty excellent. but, that being said, it's also a huge expense for something that seems so obviously crippled.

any pointers?
 
Last edited:

OCO

Member
Joined
Jul 17, 2011
Messages
928
Location
Central Michigan
And what has Uniden told you when you contacted them directly?..... Anyone?....Hello? Send one in? .....Hello? Forums are great places to exchange ideas, but if you think you got ripped off, do you just keep on posting on a forum, or at maybe go to the source of your problem directly. If Uniden hasn't responded to your forum postings up to now, as I asked a few days ago, Hows that workin' for ya?
 

W6KRU

Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
3,408
Location
Oceanside, CA
And what has Uniden told you when you contacted them directly?..... Anyone?....Hello? Send one in? .....Hello? Forums are great places to exchange ideas, but if you think you got ripped off, do you just keep on posting on a forum, or at maybe go to the source of your problem directly. If Uniden hasn't responded to your forum postings up to now, as I asked a few days ago, Hows that workin' for ya?

It is obviously not defective hardware so what are they going to do?
 

RoninJoliet

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jan 14, 2003
Messages
3,384
Location
ILL
kbehning, you were right in the heart of "PLFD" and using T113-Will Co should have been the best coverage for you....Two towers in PLFD....
 

kbehning

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
120
Location
Eastern Iowa
And what has Uniden told you when you contacted them directly?..... Anyone?....Hello? Send one in? .....Hello? Forums are great places to exchange ideas, but if you think you got ripped off, do you just keep on posting on a forum, or at maybe go to the source of your problem directly. If Uniden hasn't responded to your forum postings up to now, as I asked a few days ago, Hows that workin' for ya?

My interest here is to put my words in front of the uniden product manager, UPMan. He's the one who always provides the solutions on here when someone posts a problem that is correctable with menu settings etc (unless some else posts the solution first). HE'S the one that needs to see the scope of who is having this problem. Talking to tech support on the 800 number at uniden who walks through a checklist gets issues like THIS one nowhere. There has been sufficient discussion between advanced scanner users on this issue that I'm convinced a product update is needed.

Help us UPMan-1-Kenobi, you're our only hope.
 

W6KRU

Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
3,408
Location
Oceanside, CA
My interest here is to put my words in front of the uniden product manager, UPMan. He's the one who always provides the solutions on here when someone posts a problem that is correctable with menu settings etc (unless some else posts the solution first). HE'S the one that needs to see the scope of who is having this problem. Talking to tech support on the 800 number at uniden who walks through a checklist gets issues like THIS one nowhere. There has been sufficient discussion between advanced scanner users on this issue that I'm convinced a product update is needed.

Help us UPMan-1-Kenobi, you're our only hope.

I agree 100%. It is time for an end to the head in the sand approach to this problem which has gotten us nowhere in 2.5 years..
 

kbehning

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
120
Location
Eastern Iowa
kbehning, you were right in the heart of "PLFD" and using T113-Will Co should have been the best coverage for you....Two towers in PLFD....

Exactly, in my experience with P25 simulcast systems, having access to more than one of the simulcast towers is a recipe to confuse heck out of the scanner. People in Johnson Co Iowa south of me have had some luck with yagis to help feed a single tower's signal to the scanner.

RoninJoliet, are you saying you get good signal decoding from T113 from Joliet? Have you gone mobile and had good decode in PLFD too? Specifically with a 396XT? That is one path forward to learning about this is to have 2 scanners with the same configuration next to each other, one showing good decode on P25 simulcast and one not...
 

kruser

Active Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
4,987
Location
West St Louis County, MO
That is one path forward to learning about this is to have 2 scanners with the same configuration next to each other, one showing good decode on P25 simulcast and one not...

I've done extensive side by side testing with three scanners on the same system.
A 996T, 396XT and 996XT. The 996T wins each time hands down.

My setup is a 12 element Maxrad Yagi or a vertical 800 MHz of unknown make with 4 or 5 dB gain. It was made for the commercial market though, I just forget the manufacturer.
I feed the antenna into a Stridsberg MCA208M multicoupler. That coupler provides a nearly flat output for up too 8 radios.
The 996T will hear everything while the 396XT and 996XT will be deaf or severely broken audio. If I go into the settings for the P25 system on the 996T and change the Adjust P25 Level from a manual setting (5 on this system) to Auto, it too decodes just as poorly as the XT models decode. Set it back to manual and a level of 5 and all is good once again.

In all fairness, I did individual tests one radio at a time without the multicoupler. A multicoupler will add noise into the signal due to the preamp used within to bring the signal back to the same level as the input signal. Multicouplers are full of mini splitters with each splitter adding a few dB of loss. Common practice is to use a preamp too raise the signal level at the input so it overcomes the loss that the mini splitters create. A good multicoupler will not have a higher output than the input. In my case, the Stridsberg multicoupler may add just under 1dB which is considered good.
The noise created by the preamp circuit can confuse a digital scanner (or analog data channel) if the noise is equal or greater then the data signal itself.
So I removed the multicoupler and ran the tests again, one scanner at a time.
The same results were obtained each time where the 996T would decode everything just fine while the XT models did not work at all or were very poor at decoding anything. I tried all tests with the Yagi and then the vertical.
I can forget using the XT models at all with the vertical. They will only decode the system using the Yagi aimed at one tower.
The 996T will decode the system just fine with the Yagi or the vertical as long as the Adjust P25 Level is set to manual. Set it to auto and it falls apart also but does make a better attempt at decoding the signal than the XT's do.
The system I monitor (St. Louis, MO City P25 public safety) is a simulcast system.
I live just far enough where it is hard to zero in on one tower only with a beam such as a Yagi. This is due to beams having a beamwidth that spreads wider the further away the source signal is. I've also tried corner reflectors but the Yagi's have always given me the best reception of this system.
I'm lucky though as I can get enough gain off of one tower so it must null out the signal from the other tower(s). This allows the XT models to work somewhat on this system. By somewhat, I'm going to say the XT's will show a 50% error rate or higher and lower while the 996T will show a 0% error rate. That's a huge difference and enough to make the system unmonitorable with the XT's.

I also have tested the HP-1(e) and GRE PSR-500 and 600 with the same setup and equipment and the GRE's do a very good job on this system. The HP-1 also suffers like the XT models but not nearly as bad. It will at least try and decode maybe 75% of the traffic kind of like the 996T will try and do when it is set to auto mode. I do not use the HP-1 on this system though.
If I travel into the city and near one of the P25 towers, the 396XT works fine but it is only receiving the one tower at that point. The 996T worked equally as well when I used to take it mobile which I no longer do.

My conclusion is that the Manual P25 Adjust setting is a must here for the simulcast I enjoy monitoring. If it (manual P25 setting) were available on the XT models, I think everything would be fine.
I still cannot see any reason why they removed the manual setting unless they were looking to simply dumb things down for the less technical types out there.

All the above mentioned receivers work equally as well as the next for conventional trunked systems (analog Mot & Edacs) in the 700/800 bands as well as on single channel (non trunked) P25 signals of which I have four.
One of the single channel signals is VHF though so I cannot do a comparison with the GRE's as they suck here due to their poor front end design which overloads easily at VHF frequencies. I can compare the four Unidens though and they perform equally well on the single channel non trunked P25 signals.
 
Last edited:

W6KRU

Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
3,408
Location
Oceanside, CA
My conclusion is that the Manual P25 Adjust setting is a must here for the simulcast I enjoy monitoring. If it (manual P25 setting) were available on the XT models, I think everything would be fine.

I still cannot see any reason why they removed the manual setting unless they were looking to simply dumb things down for the less technical types out there.


Yep. The feature that makes the T models usable on a simulcast system was removed from the XTs. Are manual controls on a radio that allow the user to adjust it for his use such a terrible concept?

It's my radio, allow me to control it.
 

markab

Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2005
Messages
100
Location
Cambridge, Ontario, Canada
Yagi

Yep. The feature that makes the T models usable on a simulcast system was removed from the XTs. Are manual controls on a radio that allow the user to adjust it for his use such a terrible concept?

It's my radio, allow me to control it.

DDAN,
Some here have had some success using a Yagi antenna. Have you tried this?

Mark
 

W6KRU

Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
3,408
Location
Oceanside, CA
DDAN,
Some here have had some success using a Yagi antenna. Have you tried this?

Mark

Yeah, I tried it and didn't have much success due to tower locations in 3 directions. I didn't buy a portable to be leashed to a yagi anyway.
 

SCOTTER

Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2007
Messages
276
Location
SOUTH BEND IN.
I loved my 396XT then the county went simulcast then it was a pain in the bleep even my wife said whats wrong with that thing? Uniden needs to come out and say we know a problem with the auto decode on the XT on simululcast systems exists and for our loyal customers firmware is on the way or they can work on the new line then come out with them and say the new line has manaul ajust for them as a new cool feature start your preorders NOT ! If they do fix it I like many will be buying the new model day 1.
 

Tryton

Member
Joined
Sep 15, 2007
Messages
562
Location
Largo, Fl
I loved my 396XT then the county went simulcast then it was a pain in the bleep even my wife said whats wrong with that thing? Uniden needs to come out and say we know a problem with the auto decode on the XT on simululcast systems exists and for our loyal customers firmware is on the way or they can work on the new line then come out with them and say the new line has manaul ajust for them as a new cool feature start your preorders NOT ! If they do fix it I like many will be buying the new model day 1.

And their lies the problem.. Could a firmware fix this and add manual adjustments, or would new hardware be the only way? The only one that could answer this one would be Paul AKA UPman..
 

RoninJoliet

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jan 14, 2003
Messages
3,384
Location
ILL
kbehning, YES, im in PLFD alot with my 396XT, there is a antenna on a water tower north of town and one at the PD on the new 150' tower...There are some dead spots in the mobile and you can watch the signal graph drop to 2 bars but on the whole i see 5 bars there on T113-Will Co...T 101-Dupage was good also till they now attached three more sites now total 7 sites on T101 so that may be one of your answers...My city (Joliet) will join T113-WCo in may as there joining SCOM....
 

W6KRU

Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
3,408
Location
Oceanside, CA
Still no comment from UPMan? I thought he provided support for these difficult problems with Uniden scanners.
 

Tryton

Member
Joined
Sep 15, 2007
Messages
562
Location
Largo, Fl
Maybe a firmware dump like their talking about in the GRE forums? I'm not smart enough to do it, but there are some super users here that properly can.
 

W6KRU

Member
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
3,408
Location
Oceanside, CA
After one week and over 1100 views, no word from Uniden? Does that mean that Unidens official response is " we don't care about our customers and all of the XT owners will just have to live with the problems"?
 

scanningisfun

Member
Joined
Jun 29, 2010
Messages
685
After one week and over 1100 views, no word from Uniden? Does that mean that Unidens official response is " we don't care about our customers and all of the XT owners will just have to live with the problems"?

I hope not. I'm sure this will be fixed in the near future. If it doesn't get fixed, more people will not be happy. Why was this not addressed before the scanner was put on the market so that it wouldn't have these issues? They are probably asking themselves that now.

Jacob
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top