BCD396XT desensing?

[scottg720]

I bought a new BCD396XT and after using it for a few days I started noticing that the audio will occasionally be muted for a second or two during a transmission. It seems like the receiver is being desensed.

I live on top of a hill and there is a set of towers about 1000 feet away that contain quite a few transmitters, although I haven't experienced similar issues with my VHF and UHF amateur radio handhelds.

I'm close to returning this radio but before I do, was interested in hearing other opinions and ideas on what this might be or how to solve.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Pap]

Sounds like one of your priority's are turned on. Turn them all off (Includeing the weather) and try it again.
I had the same problem.

 

[kayn1n32008]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9780; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.600 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

Close call may be on as well.

 

[n4yek]

I have the same issue when monitoring the CB band with my 396T. I discovered when you open the squelch that does not happen. I normally keep the squelch level set at 2, but when a strong CB transmission takes place near me, my audio will mute. Opening the squelch will allow the audio to be heard..

 

[scottg720]

Thanks for all the replies. I had priority and weather alerts enabled and when I disabled them the audio gaps disappeared.

In terms of programming, I currently have the Massachusetts State Sys configuration that came from the factory, plus a couple dozen conventional/analog channls set up in a separate group. I'd like to be able to have my town PD/FD channels (2) set up as priority channels.

I changed the max number of priority channels to 2 and set the poll rate to 7 seconds from the default of 2. This seems a little more tolerable, but I'm surprised that the gap is as large as it is with only 2 conventional priority channels set up. Are there other parameters I can tweak to further reduce the gap length? Is the priority performance better with digital channels or trunking?

 

[RoninJoliet]

Did u purchase the 396XT from a "dealer' and if so does it have the latest 1.10 firmware installed....TY...

 

[scottg720]

I bought it from a dealer and it's at 1.08.14. Haven't upgraded the firmware yet but I will at some point.