Help with an AOR
Joe,
Here are some ideas to help you out with your AOR scanner, provided that it is not an actual malfunction of the unit. One thing you have to understand is that there will be a higher degree of sensitivity with this unit over the less expensive brands. With this in mind you have to expect it to stop on many more frequencies then a less expensive scanner. If you get to know the frequency bands well, you can scan particular areas without as much interference if you know what you are looking for. Choosing the proper step size will help as well, an example would be if public safety is using 25khz spacing and that is what your are searching for then do not use 5khz spacing while scanning, sure you will not miss anything, but it slows your scan speed and gives you a better chance of locking on to a frequency 5khz early. Try to avoid particular bands that contain pager frequencies. Use your lockout/skip function while searching a band, this way you can continue to search a band uninterrupted. As far as birdies go, all receivers have them from the cheap ones to the most expensive, typically you can get a list of them for your receiver and that will help you determine if that is the cause of your receiver breaking squelch, if it is then you can lock out that frequency. Also, search small segments at a time, do not try to scan from 100-500Mhz looking for something special, if you know your bands then you know where to look and there should be no need to search such a large piece of the spectrum at a time. Also know that receive modes change through different bands, for example from 100-500Mhz you have wide FM for the broadcast frequencies, you have VHF and UHF AM air band, you have narrow FM for public safety VHF and UHF. So you see if you scan the wrong bands you may get many frequencies breaking squelch that sound like interference that are actually a good hit, but your scanner is in the wrong receive mode or step size, or even using the wrong filter width if you have that option. The reason you do not have these problems with less expensive scanners is because you have no option for your step sizes, or receive mode, they have one option for each band and they can not be changed. I hope I haven’t insulted your intelligence, It wasn’t too clear how much experience you have using an AOR receiver as opposed to a less expensive radio shack model. They are very different but once you learn how to use them they are much more powerful. Email me at scott_ramage81 at hotmail.com if you need more info.
Scott
