996XT on DPS & Austin/TC Problems

[lperry]

Radio works perfectly on all analog type systems - EDACS, conventional, etc. No signal strength issues, usually full quieting, etc.

Radio seems to track systems with digital audio correctly, RSSI's show to be good on Freescan logs, etc.

* below indicates all available settings were tried - e.g. audio = all, digital only, etc.; AGC + on, off

DPS SETTINGS = Conventional
NAC = *
AGC = *
Audio type = all, digital only
P25 wait = *
Hold = *
Delay = *

Transmissions rarely break squelch. Probably receiving no more than 10% of strong transmissions available in the (strong signal) areas I'm in. When they do come through audio quality is garbled but readable to good but always with dropouts in each transmission.

On Austin/Travis County

System = P25, all remaining settings similar - e.g. tried all.

Results on this system were similar. Only difference is that it appears that all transmissions partially come through.

Can anyone help, or has had similar experience. Thanks.

Lewis

 

[hiegtx]

Radio works perfectly on all analog type systems - EDACS, conventional, etc. No signal strength issues, usually full quieting, etc.

Radio seems to track systems with digital audio correctly, RSSI's show to be good on Freescan logs, etc.

* below indicates all available settings were tried - e.g. audio = all, digital only, etc.; AGC + on, off

DPS SETTINGS = Conventional
NAC = *
AGC = *
Audio type = all, digital only
P25 wait = *
Hold = *
Delay = *

Transmissions rarely break squelch. Probably receiving no more than 10% of strong transmissions available in the (strong signal) areas I'm in. When they do come through audio quality is garbled but readable to good but always with dropouts in each transmission.

On Austin/Travis County

System = P25, all remaining settings similar - e.g. tried all.

Results on this system were similar. Only difference is that it appears that all transmissions partially come through.

Can anyone help, or has had similar experience. Thanks.

Lewis

Lewis, for DPS, and any other digital system, set your audio type to "digital only".

If you're using software to program, you might save the program file and post it here. FreeScan files would need to be either zipped, before they could be uploaded, or once you save the file, then go back & rename it, to add a "txt" extension. Example- if your file was named "Austin 05-04-2010.996", rename that to "Austin 05-04-2010.996.txt" to make it a file you can upload. Same thing goes for files created with ARC-XT or Proscan. (I don't have either of those, but I'm sure somebody in this group does.)

If you upload the file, then maybe somebody can spot something that got overlooked. (We've all done that at times, missed what turns out to be obvious to someone else.)

 

[lperry]

Problem partially solved

Thanks for your excellent suggestion.

The decoding problem is related to the XT's automatic P25 tuning. After much reading on the forums under 'P25 adjustment' searches I found hidden menus (press HOLD while powering up) that allow some adjustment of the P25 decoding parameters. Apparently many other people have had similar experiences based on my reading. By the way, when I called the Uniden tech there was no mention of this - just something that translated basically into send the unit in and we'll send it back to you and tell you there is nothing wrong with it. Thanks for letting me blow off a little steam.

Now back on track. By adjusting these parameters the performance of the unit was impoved from about a 3.0 to a 7.5 (and this is repeatable - i.e. I can make the perfomance miserable again by restoring the out of the box settings). Unfortuantely I have not been able to get further improvement beyond this point.

Finally the XT problem would probably not show up in a Freescan file. There are P25 settings in Freescan, but they appear to be for 996T's, not the newer XT's (different pull down choices, different ranges of adjustment, etc.)

Thanks again for your help and suggestion.

 

[Russell]

What settings did you change? I have terrible reception on the Austin system, but it is highly location dependent. The Austin system is, indeed, very strong by design. I believe the requirement was for 90%+ building penetration. I get great reception at work, but terrible reception at the house. I'm familiar with the menus, but what did you set it to.

Thanks,
Russell

 

[lperry]

Settings used

Russell,

I used a mode of 8 and a level of 150. It doesn't seem too critical as long as it's in this neighborhood. Error rates show in single digits or very low two digits, but audio still frequently does not come through.

If know that the higher the level is set, the tighter the auto adjustment range is, but have no idea what the mode setting does, if anything.

Also, I mis-spoke earlier. It doesn't appear that Freescan gives access to these parameters from the scanner configuration screenthat has the multiple tabs.

Thanks for your inerest.

Lewis

 

[Russell]

Yes, I found some notes on this. I only get terrible reception at my Austin residence - calls are practically unreadable here (both on BCD396XT and GRE PSR500). Changing the P25 Level to 200 forces the scanner into a Manual 8 mode. Apparently, this defeats some of the automatic compensation. Setting it to 150 to 200 clearly helped in the "bad" area. I'm interested in what levels between 50 and 200 do as this isn't really clear. I also understand P25 Mode 3 to be default for the XT and it definitely works well on that setting. Again, however, I'm interested in what the other modes do. I'll see if I can track down more info on this.

Russell