Bad Radio or Not?

[trunkerman63]

Is it normal for this radio to sit there and make this soft popping sound with less than a 4-5 bar digital signal, not allowing the voice to come through? That's been the problem with this radio ever since I had it and I can't believe it is working properly.

If a digital signal comes on, and sometimes a weak analog signal, it just sits there doing that soft popping noise. To me a normally functioning digital scanner should receive a voice digital signal from one bar on up, but this one never does. It takes too much digital signal to function right, and that seems WRONG to me.

Thanks for your input.

 

[tonyclark]

We are not mind readers, what model is your radio?

 

[SquierStrat]

I know the signal meter on the psr 500 and 600 needs a little adjusting from the factory. Search for psr 500 rssi settings on here and you should come up with something. Id do it for you if i wasnt on a phone..

 

[trunkerman63]

Thanks SS for not being smart with me like the reply before yours. Yes, it is a 600. I sure didn't know that about the 600. Would that allow the signal to work right, IOW, get the voice from a digital transmission? I will sure search for that info.

Thanks.

 

[jackj]

trunkerman, tonyclark was a little short with you but he is right. You asked what was wrong with your radio, it just pops. But you didn't say what system you were trying to monitor, what scanner you were using or what frequency (s) you were trying to listen to. Now that you have identified your scanner maybe folks expert with the 600 can answer your question.

 

[trunkerman63]

I sure did overlook some details, jackj. Pardon me on that.

Okay, I do have the GRE 600. I'm wanting to receive signals in the 155+Mhz. range. One I'm having problems with now operates on 155.6850, Nolan County Texas. The transmissions are FM digital. Most use a repeater or whatever the new digital systems use for our sheriffs' offices. I can also receive the digital air base frequencies in the 300Mhz. range which are usually full scale 5 bars, but sometimes, if the scanner lands on them at the wrong time, there will be silence with some soft popping. Usually though, they snap into place and work okay. I'm finding digital signals to be much harder to pull in than analog. I guess our local DPS office discovered this too, reason they constructed a new tower at their headquarters nearly twice the height of their old one, I mean it can be seen for miles! They probably found it harder to recieve what they wanted on digital so up went the much taller tower. Anyway, jackj, that's my problem. Hope this additional info helps. Thanks -

Additional info, I live in an apartment and can only use an indoor antenna. I have a piece of wire on the other end of a coax attached to the radio. It has helped a lot compared to just the Diamond antenna I had plugged into the radio. If Nolan County ever crosses the threshold, gets up to 4 bars, their voices finally come in, sometimes not very distinct, some breaking, but are "there". I have my squelch very low so that my noisest channel, usually the RR channels on 160.80 or so, are giving me hash for a second before the squelch shuts. I have it as low as I can to try to help those puny digital signals.

 

[jackj]

According to the data base here, Nolan County S.O. is using mixed mode analog and P25 digital. Make sure that the modulation option on your scanner is set to "Auto". The data base also says that sometimes they are encrypted, you won't be able to copy encrypted signals and that may be why your scanner pops sometimes. I don't have a GRE 600 so I can't give you any more scanner specific help, sorry.

 

[brownlab]

I agree with jackj that your popping noise is related to the occasional encryption. I do not have a 600 but may Uniden 996XT does something similar when it tries to decode the DC encrypted police channels. If you do not hear the noise on any other frequencies then I think that is your issue. At least you are not totally encrypted.

 

[Mojaveflyer]

Reception Issues W/ PSR-600

I have a 600 as well and had a number of issues with it. I monitor railroads and aircraft primarily and neither service uses PL tones. Shortly after getting the radio I bought a FM Trap at Radio Shack and made an adapter with a couple of connectors and a short piece of coax that made a huge difference. I also tend to turn on the global attenuation when I'm close to town (about 15 miles north of downtown Denver) and when away from Denver (even in outlying cities) I can leave the global attenuation off. I do see the "S" meter going up and down due to the strong intermod when close to town. I run a 1/4 wave and a 1/2 wave antenna joined with a "T" connector that seems to work well for both the VHF railroad and aircraft bands and the UHF military aircraft band. Good luck!

 

[trunkerman63]

Thanks for all the info, guys. Living in an apartment I can't string up an elaborate outdoor antenna in here.
The skip was good last night and it was performing well with adequate signal strengths. I'm sorry you have had issues with the 600, Jim. My first digital radio and I have to pick a lemon! Well, it was on sale at Ham Radio Outlet, so I went for it.

Thanks again -

 

[RoninJoliet]

Its really not a lemon, take it from experiance trying to scan digital is a bugger, its not like analog, here in ILL on the Starcom digital 700/800 system we have issues most of the time with signals on digital .....

 

[trunkerman63]

I agree, Ronin. Digital is really squirrely at times. Sometimes my strongest signal from the air base where I live near, acts strange and pops. I never know if they're talking or it has hiccups.

 

[jackj]

I have a PSR-800 and it displays a "E" when the encryption flag is set on a talkgroup. It will also pop or burp sometimes, I look at the display and if it shows an "E" then I ignore it. What would be nice is if there was someway to set it to skip encrypted talkgroups. Since I can't decrypt them, why waste time stopping on them.

 

[IowaGuy1603]

I have a PSR-800 and it displays a "E" when the encryption flag is set on a talkgroup. It will also pop or burp sometimes, I look at the display and if it shows an "E" then I ignore it. What would be nice is if there was someway to set it to skip encrypted talkgroups. Since I can't decrypt them, why waste time stopping on them.

Delete them or skip them,

 

[lep]

I have no experience with the systems you are describing. I can share that I use both my BCD996XT and my HP-1 to monitor a 700 MHz P-25 public safety system (and log them) 24/7, at present it has 6 sites but I listen only to the one in my home town, the nearest to me, and copy if 100%. the traffic never goes 'digital'.
Perhpas I am just lucky but I don't expereince the complaints I read about in the Forums and it doesn't sound much different from the other p.s. 800 MHz MOT smart net analogue system (which has only one site and it is the same tower as the P-25 700 MHz). [how can I monitor both? I have a second HP-1].