Hi all,
I went out overnight and ran the 396 for a few hours downtown in Calgary to get a feel for its operation and performance. Here's what I found.
I ran the radio off freshly-charged batteries from 11pm onwards, listening to several mixed mode P16/analog Motorola trunks, EDACS systems, LTR systems, and conventional channels, running almost all of the systems that are using up the 31% of the memory my scanner has filled so far. I was out between 11pm and 2:30am with it receiving most of the time, and in fact forgot to turn the radio off when I came home - but when I discovered it this morning at 7:00 still turned on (but out of range of most of the trunk systems), the battery level was still in the 3.xx range. This was with the volume most often set between 8 and 14 (road noise in a '97 F-150 is horrible, and I don't have my FM transmitter hooked up right now to run scanner audio thru my stereo), and backlight set to 'squelch'.
On my initial approach to the city, and early driving around within, the P25 transmissions on Calgary's 753F Smartzone system were all but perfect. There was a little bit of droppage here and there, but no worse than any other P25-receiving scanner I've heard. The other trunk systems and conventional channels were operating great as well.
Later, as I navigated to different areas of the city, including the downtown core (deep in the land of the tall concrete), the radio seemed to have a harder time decoding the P25 audio signal. I have my suspicions that it might have been still locked onto another, more distant tower, as I have all the frequencies for the Smartzone system put in one system, so that I needn't duplicate talkgroups across six systems (one per tower).
Reception seemed better than I experienced earlier in the day. I replaced the SMA antenna with the adapter and a thru-the-glass scanner antenna I picked up years ago at Radio Shack, which is permanently mounted on my pickup truck. Putting the telescoping metal Radio Shack antenna on the radio when using it in portable fashion (as I mentioned last time I posted) seems to give me half-decent coverage at home (30+ miles from downtown Calgary) - perhaps a little less than my BC250D, if not as good.
Fire tone-outs are working fine for me, not that I expected they wouldn't. Of note is that if you use 'hold' to monitor the channel in FTO mode, it ignores the CTCSS code set on that channel. My department runs CTCSS on our alerting channel, and if I use 'hold monitor' in certain areas where I know there to be interference that the CTCSS tone normally blocks, it picks up the interference.
I don't mind the belt clip, but it would be nice if it was more compatible with other similar clips - I have a handful of these button-and-groove type belt clips, for my phone, GPS (GPSMAP 60CS), etc, and they won't lock the radio into the groove like the factory clip does.
I initially had systems set to 2 seconds hold time, 4 seconds hold time, etc., depending on how often I wanted to hear them. This turned out to be a poor choice, as with the number of systems I was monitoring, it took forever to come to the one I wanted. Setting them all to "0" hold time works a lot better for my tastes, but I'd still like to have a key that would let me skip to the next system in the scan list. For example, if I know there's a fire incident on a certain talkgroup on 753F, but I don't necessarily want to hold on that system/group, and I'm several systems away (let's say I'm in RCMP and the scanner will scan RCMP>Air>Towing>Utilities>Public Works>753F in that order). I'd like to be able to just hit some kind of skip key 5 times (in the above example) to get back to 753F. I suppose FUNC+(knob) 5 times will do that, am I right?
I haven't seen any keypad legend wear, although I haven't done any heavy programming or manipulation of the settings using the keypad, except to hit HOLD, SCAN, LOCK, and Light repeatedly while driving around overnight. Everything still looks new.
I would love to have it running computer control, but as mentioned elsewhere, the Uniden program isn't simulating the rotating of the knob if you don't have a scroll mouse. The help file implies arrow keys will work too, but they don't.
I also found something else which may or may not be documented in the help file for UASD (as I haven't bothered to check it unless I'm having trouble with something). I was accidentally typing with the virtual control in focus, and found that Shift+H acts like Func+HOLD (turning on Close Call). So I'd wager that holding Shift = holding Func on the radio. Again, this may be a 'well, duh' to most people, or those who have actually RTFM, but I thought it was neat.
Anyway, I am ultimately pleased with this radio, and hope I can find an antenna with decent 140-900mhz coverage in an SMA version, which will make my fun complete.
I went out overnight and ran the 396 for a few hours downtown in Calgary to get a feel for its operation and performance. Here's what I found.
I ran the radio off freshly-charged batteries from 11pm onwards, listening to several mixed mode P16/analog Motorola trunks, EDACS systems, LTR systems, and conventional channels, running almost all of the systems that are using up the 31% of the memory my scanner has filled so far. I was out between 11pm and 2:30am with it receiving most of the time, and in fact forgot to turn the radio off when I came home - but when I discovered it this morning at 7:00 still turned on (but out of range of most of the trunk systems), the battery level was still in the 3.xx range. This was with the volume most often set between 8 and 14 (road noise in a '97 F-150 is horrible, and I don't have my FM transmitter hooked up right now to run scanner audio thru my stereo), and backlight set to 'squelch'.
On my initial approach to the city, and early driving around within, the P25 transmissions on Calgary's 753F Smartzone system were all but perfect. There was a little bit of droppage here and there, but no worse than any other P25-receiving scanner I've heard. The other trunk systems and conventional channels were operating great as well.
Later, as I navigated to different areas of the city, including the downtown core (deep in the land of the tall concrete), the radio seemed to have a harder time decoding the P25 audio signal. I have my suspicions that it might have been still locked onto another, more distant tower, as I have all the frequencies for the Smartzone system put in one system, so that I needn't duplicate talkgroups across six systems (one per tower).
Reception seemed better than I experienced earlier in the day. I replaced the SMA antenna with the adapter and a thru-the-glass scanner antenna I picked up years ago at Radio Shack, which is permanently mounted on my pickup truck. Putting the telescoping metal Radio Shack antenna on the radio when using it in portable fashion (as I mentioned last time I posted) seems to give me half-decent coverage at home (30+ miles from downtown Calgary) - perhaps a little less than my BC250D, if not as good.
Fire tone-outs are working fine for me, not that I expected they wouldn't. Of note is that if you use 'hold' to monitor the channel in FTO mode, it ignores the CTCSS code set on that channel. My department runs CTCSS on our alerting channel, and if I use 'hold monitor' in certain areas where I know there to be interference that the CTCSS tone normally blocks, it picks up the interference.
I don't mind the belt clip, but it would be nice if it was more compatible with other similar clips - I have a handful of these button-and-groove type belt clips, for my phone, GPS (GPSMAP 60CS), etc, and they won't lock the radio into the groove like the factory clip does.
I initially had systems set to 2 seconds hold time, 4 seconds hold time, etc., depending on how often I wanted to hear them. This turned out to be a poor choice, as with the number of systems I was monitoring, it took forever to come to the one I wanted. Setting them all to "0" hold time works a lot better for my tastes, but I'd still like to have a key that would let me skip to the next system in the scan list. For example, if I know there's a fire incident on a certain talkgroup on 753F, but I don't necessarily want to hold on that system/group, and I'm several systems away (let's say I'm in RCMP and the scanner will scan RCMP>Air>Towing>Utilities>Public Works>753F in that order). I'd like to be able to just hit some kind of skip key 5 times (in the above example) to get back to 753F. I suppose FUNC+(knob) 5 times will do that, am I right?
I haven't seen any keypad legend wear, although I haven't done any heavy programming or manipulation of the settings using the keypad, except to hit HOLD, SCAN, LOCK, and Light repeatedly while driving around overnight. Everything still looks new.
I would love to have it running computer control, but as mentioned elsewhere, the Uniden program isn't simulating the rotating of the knob if you don't have a scroll mouse. The help file implies arrow keys will work too, but they don't.
I also found something else which may or may not be documented in the help file for UASD (as I haven't bothered to check it unless I'm having trouble with something). I was accidentally typing with the virtual control in focus, and found that Shift+H acts like Func+HOLD (turning on Close Call). So I'd wager that holding Shift = holding Func on the radio. Again, this may be a 'well, duh' to most people, or those who have actually RTFM, but I thought it was neat.
Anyway, I am ultimately pleased with this radio, and hope I can find an antenna with decent 140-900mhz coverage in an SMA version, which will make my fun complete.
