BC246T with ARC246

[johnwashington]

Your Question:
I get my frequencies from radioreference.com for local listening and the ARC246 program to store frequencies and upload to my scanner. My question is: Radioreference frequencies say FM modulation but when I use the "AUTO" select mode for modulation - the default for auto select, the default for your scanner is NFM. Which should I use? NFM or FM.


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Our Solution:
Thank you for using our system.
====NFM==== Narrowband FM (called FM on most scanners) -- is used on most current analog public safety communications and the total deviation is generally limited to 30 KHz down to about 12 KHz. ====SNFM==== Super-Narrowband FM (called NFM on most scanners) -- is used on most digital FM and future analog public safety communications, is generally limited to 11 KHz and below in width.
What I am still confused with is using this scanner and this software, I manually chose in the ARC program for SCANNING only and modulation, FM. For best reception should I keep FM or use the "Auto" select which switches my manually chosen FM to NFM. For those of you who use both this scanner and this program, what did you do? Or what would you recommend? - Many thanks.

 

[bpsmicro]

In my experience, using NFM on regular FM conventional frequencies doesn't affect reception at all, but does impact audio quality. In fact I found my conventional frequencies where I used "Auto" came in extra loud.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem except that a trunking system that *does* use NFM can only be scanned in FM mode on the 246T (meaning the audio of thr trunking system is significantly reduced). The result was that I had to crank the volume to hear thetrunked system, and when the conventional kicked in (in "Auto" or NFM mode) I nearly blew out the speaker.
Setting the conventionals to "FM" specifically narrowed the volume gap somewhat (though I still need the valume nearly full to hear the trunking system).

Brad.

 

[johnwashington]

Thanks Brad-
Very useful information indeed. So I am assuming if you are listening to just conventional frequencies (which by the way is all we have in my county), FM would be your preference?

John