Anybody else having problems with Buncombe Fire Comm?

[fyrboy]

From Henderson County with my 2009 BCD-396xt, periodically sounds like a tunable radio that's not quite on-frequency. Been happening for several weeks, mobile & at home. Also noticing increased static on Asheville Fire, more often than not, particularly on dispatch.

 

[n4yek]

Been happening for several weeks, mobile & at home..

Believe it or not but when the leaves on trees come out, signal quality goes down a bunch. I experience the same thing where I live with systems in neighboring counties.
I have a daughter that lives in Asheville and was there two days ago. Everything sounded good while i was monitoring.

Then again, there might be a problem...

 

[teufler]

For Grins, I would change the modulation to fm from nbfm. Say they are off frequency, a wider setting , you may not notice . it is an easy check. The fire shows nbfm but I would try the change.Fastest way is go to the band plan editor and change there.

 

[AlphaFive]

I don't possess the technical skills to know what this means, but, beginning about a month ago, the volume level of the v.h.f. transmissions went way down. I havn't noticed any signal loss, but the v.h.f. is hard to hear. The M 36 for Asheville, and the P25 transmissions for Buncombe 700 MHz, are still the same in Weaverville.

 

[fyrboy]

change the modulation to fm from nbfm. go to the band plan editor and change there.

Thank you very much for telling me HOW to do it, rather than just saying "Do this or that." It means a lot when instructions are provided. Are "Band Defaults" (which I found) the same as "the band plan editor?" I don't see anything there that says "nbfm", only "nfm". If this is where I'm supposed to be, am I to change all 24 "fm" to "nfm?" Thanks again.

 

[teufler]

you can change the modulation type two ways. Using the band plan editor, you can select the range of frequencies then select the tab in the next column then the down arrow and say fm or nbfm. Or you can click the system then the groupo and you see individual entries. Go to the modulation tab and click the arrow and select the modulation you want. So one way, its specific and the other covers a broad range. If there are 24 or multiple frequencies to change, the band plan editor is faster. I have found , on conventional frequencies that are digital, the latter works good, you can also change the audio type from all to digital. I know the book says that the radio will aotomatically detect and adjust but it seems like there is a slight delay. Changing p25 wait time from 400 to 0 seems to work also. If the signal is digital, why wait.

 

[firemedic2150]

I was visiting Black Mountain over the last weekend staying at the Quality Inn on Hwy 9. I was not able to pick up either of the Buncombe simulcast sites very well on the 396XT but I could get the Asheville system pretty good. The SO and FD simulcast on VHF sounded good on my BC125 but the few times I heard anything on the Black Mountain VHF frequencies the audio was very soft. I could get Chambers Mtn. VIPER just barely, and Meadows Mtn. would stop on the control channel but never heard anything. As this was my first time over there I have no real comparison to give.

 

[INDY72]

I don't possess the technical skills to know what this means, but, beginning about a month ago, the volume level of the v.h.f. transmissions went way down. I havn't noticed any signal loss, but the v.h.f. is hard to hear. The M 36 for Asheville, and the P25 transmissions for Buncombe 700 MHz, are still the same in Weaverville.

Te reason for the "loss of volume" is that they finally went narrowband on the VHF. A lot of scanner users have reported this issue on most of the VHF systems they monitor that have narrowbanded. Really not much you can do about it on your end, unless you have options in your scaner's programming software to turn on the audio gain for those freqs.

 

[AlphaFive]

Thanks for the reply...as soon as you describe that, the phrase that comes to mind is "duh". I should have remembered that, now it all makes sense, thanks again