BCD396XT - Need Help.

[douglasphansen]

SOLVED

It appears to me that the scanner isn't receiving transmissions from either site. I did not see any signal strength indication in the upper right hand corner.

What happens if you take your scanner on a road trip and do some scanning about 1/4 mile away from each of these two sites?

If you can hear transmissions there, that confirms your scanner is programmed correctly.

When you get back home and don't receive anything, that means there is a reception issue at your home. It could be one or more of the following:

1. Site attenuation On as Upman mentioned
2. You could have a defective antenna which only works when close to a transmitter
3. There could be some electrical/electronic devices in your home generating interference which desensitizes your scanner. (I have a Motorola XTS3000 radio monitoring an 800 trunked system that stops receiving if I place it too close to a computer display screen).
4. Materials used to construct your home could be soaking up the radio waves. (Stepping outside with your scanner would help diagnose the two above items.)
5. This is a "left field" situation meaning the possibilities of this are remote. That said, I have seen where "leaky" cable television cables can adversely affect radio reception. Many years ago we put a repeater in at our fire station. We were having a problem with transmissions reaching the repeater. After the techs spent hours scratching their heads, we figured there was an issue with the cable TV system. We got with the cable TV folks and they briefly turned off the channel we suspected as being the culprit. Everything worked fine until they turned the channel back on.

I think the mystery of mysteries has been solved.

My home is a black hole of radio traffic.

Attached below is a map explaining my head scratching.

Walker Mountain is 1.5x further away from my house than Mount Beacon. When I'm out on the road, literally a 1/4 mile from my house, I start picking up Fishkill PD and Beacon PD from the Walker Mountain Site which was puzzling, because Fishkill PD's FCC Call sign is registered to the Mount Beacon site.

I tested the Mount Beacon control channel in both the Blue outlined areas on the map. I would pick up the control channel noise, however, would still not receive any traffic. The problem may be in part to the two mountain ranges (depicted by the Green curved lines) between my house and Mount Beacon.

I'll do a follow up test on the other side of the mountain ranges to see if I have can receive from Mount Beacon.

Questions:
1. Is an upgraded portable antenna gonna do anything if I want to listen inside my house? (Not looking to set up an outdoor antenna).
2. Is there a range difference between Conventional and Trunked systems. If so, why? I noticed that the Conventional channels are listed on RR as have a 25 mile range and the trunked systems are listed at 10. Curious as to why this is.

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR HELP.

This unit was literally a complete, total mystery to me 3 days ago. Basically a paperweight. Really appreciate all of your suggestions and tutorials.


Best,


Doug

 

[UPMan]

Here is a line-of-sight plot from the Mt. Beacon site. (Red is within line-of-sight, white is not). This does not take into account vegetation or structure...only terrain. The blue/purple crosshairs are the Mt. Beacon location. I got elevation of 312 meters above terrain from the ULS system (ULS License - Public Safety/Spec Emerg, 806-821/851-866 MHz, Conv. License - WNQC519 - FISHKILL, TOWN OF - Location 2).

You can do this yourself: https://forums.radioreference.com/general-scanning-discussion/115818-how-far-can-i-receive.html

There is marginal line-of-site to your home base, so I suspect you've either got real good foil-backed insulation on your house or that there are structures not accounted for by the plot (or the antenna is not at the height indicated on the license).

EDIT: I didn't realize I had the heywhatsthat site set for meters and entered feet. Revised plot below based on 312 meters instead of a bit over 1050 meters

 

[UPMan]

Here is an elevation plot from the antenna to your address. As you can see, the plot comes very close to the ground a half mile or so from your house. You might be able to RX with an outside/rooftop antenna just high enough to get over your neighbor across the street's house. Looks like it might be blocking line-of-sight.

 

[ofd8001]

Questions:
1. Is an upgraded portable antenna gonna do anything if I want to listen inside my house? (Not looking to set up an outdoor antenna). You could try a portable antenna that is matched to the receive frequencies, versus the multi-band that came with the scanner. Bear in mind that the scanner uses an SMA connection and few aftermarket antennas use that - BNC is more prevalent. You can use a BNC/SMA adapter, but adapters have a little signal loss with them. I wouldn't be large sums of money it would work however. An outside antenna, mounted as high as possible using the best coax you can afford is the rule of thumb for bringing in "distant" signals or to overcome being in a geographic depression. Alternatively outside antennas can be mounted in attics and get almost as good results, emphasis on "almost".

2. Is there a range difference between Conventional and Trunked systems. If so, why? I noticed that the Conventional channels are listed on RR as have a 25 mile range and the trunked systems are listed at 10. Curious as to why this is. It's a complicated answer. Radio Reference's standards call for Range settings for groups to be approximately that of the entity's service area. Practically, one can receive channels much farther away. For Sites it is largely dependent on the "horsepower" of the transmitter and it's height.