doctordave
Member
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2003
- Messages
- 1,562
While doing some field testing of the 536 on Maryland's Eastern Shore, I experienced some quite unexpected difficulties in monitoring a few Motorola Type II digital 800 trunked systems.....specifically Harford County and the Upper Eastern Shore Consortium. Same troubles with the DE 800 systems of New Castle County and Kent County (DE). While driving in fairly rural areas, decoding rapidly fluctuated back and forth from great to very poor. The S meter seemed to dip down to low levels each time the decoding suffered and came right back up to a solid 5 bars when decoding recovered. I was not near any obvious cell towers, etc. It is worth noting that the Uniden 796/296/996 and the GRE radios have always handled these very well designed county/state systems phenomenally well - on the exact same routes of travel. Curiously, my 536 was handling comparable type II systems in Howard County MD and Anne Arundel County MD rather well during testing days ago.
I'll likely return to these same areas soon to try various forms of attenuation ... but the rapid shifts between great and poor reception isn't really classic for front end overload. All antenna connections are rock solid. The issues were confirmed on both of my vehicle's 536 radios. Any thoughts?
I'll likely return to these same areas soon to try various forms of attenuation ... but the rapid shifts between great and poor reception isn't really classic for front end overload. All antenna connections are rock solid. The issues were confirmed on both of my vehicle's 536 radios. Any thoughts?