BCD996XT: Which Frequency Should I Use?

[cbehr91]

My BCD996XT can monitor both the so-called splinter railroad channels (ex: 160.2375) as well as the regular channels in narrowband (ex: 160.2300). You can set custom step sizes within the scanner and I have the 150.8-162 mHz band set to 7.5 kHz and as I've been putting in local frequencies I have the modulation set to NFM.

If a local line uses 161.190 should I just put that in or should I use 161.19750? Does it make any difference in selectivity or audio quality with the scanner?

 

[wtp]

just a thought

have you checked the railroad service under service search ?
i have a 396t and the new channels are there. just checked the 396xt and it also has the new ones.

 

[AK9R]

If a local line uses 161.190 should I just put that in or should I use 161.19750?

Not sure why you would do that. If the RR is using 161.190, they're using 161.190.

The "splinter frequencies" on the 7.5 kHz raster in between the old AAR channels are just additional channels that can be assigned now that everyone has narrowbanded.

As for audio quality, try regular FM and narrow FM to see which one sounds best to you.

 

[cbehr91]

NFM almost always has more robust audio than regular FM.

 

[slapshot0017]

NFM almost always has more robust audio than regular FM.

In what world? Its quiet and half the signal... Wide band FM works 100 times better... It was a marketing Ploy by the radio industry to sell more radios... You don't have to worry about what they are transmitting at anyway... When receiving it makes no difference whatsoever...

I wouldn't worry about the 100's channels. The only services that use those channels are the car departments and maybe MOW if they're in a very RF dense area...

 

[cbehr91]

In what world? Its quiet and useless... Wide band FM works 100 times better... It was a marketing Ploy by the radio industry to sell more radios... You don't have to worry about what they are transmitting at anyway... When receiving it makes no difference whatsoever...

I wouldn't worry about the 100's channels. The only services that use those channels are the car departments and maybe MOW if they're in a very RF dense area...

I'm a bit confused by your statement. I thought the government mandated a narrowband switchover by 2013. Why would they be concerned about Kenwood, ICOM, Moto, etc, profits? I certainly don't think the railroads would spend the money they did to upgrade equipment if they didn't have to.

At least with the ICOM amateur rigs I've used, if you switch the mode from wide to narrow the audio is a bit more robust and it helps with selectivity.

Sent from my SM-S765C using Tapatalk

 

[slapshot0017]

I'm a bit confused by your statement. I thought the government mandated a narrowband switchover by 2013. Why would they be concerned about Kenwood, ICOM, Moto, etc, profits? I certainly don't think the railroads would spend the money they did to upgrade equipment if they didn't have to.

At least with the ICOM amateur rigs I've used, if you switch the mode from wide to narrow the audio is a bit more robust and it helps with selectivity.

Sent from my SM-S765C using Tapatalk

I can't imagine anywhere that you would get a better signal on a narrow band transmission... The industry (companies and government) created the mandate so they could fit more people on the spectrum while compromising audio quality... Like I said so they could sell more gear... Its like the whole digital thing... There is absolutely no need for it.

When you set it to "NFM" all it does really is change the transmit keeping the signal on the intended frequency rather than occupying more bandwidth. On a radio the reciever tightens the audio input (or whatever its called... I can't think of the name) in the vocoder little bit so that the radio makes the audio louder so you can actually hear it... If you are listening to amateur you are hearing wide band and I'm shocked its not over deviating on you. I don't really deal with scanners alot, but my old radio shack pro 24 recieves wideband just as clear as it recieves narrowband just a little louder on wideband.

 

[AK9R]

I thought the government mandated a narrowband switchover by 2013.

They, actually the FCC, did.

Why would they be concerned about Kenwood, ICOM, Moto, etc, profits?

There is a cynical school of thought which says that the FCC is in the pockets of the major radio manufacturers and will do whatever the manufacturers want. The manufacturers, of course, are profit driven. So, if the FCC says you have to narrow-band and that means you have to buy new radios to comply, that benefits the manufacturers.

The spectrum management reason for narrow-banding is that in a given amount of spectrum, one way to increase the number of available channels is to narrow the bandwidth of the signals. Using the old bandwidth, often referred to as 25 kHz, the VHF channels were 15 kHz apart and there were 96 channels in the railroad band between 159.810 MHz and 161.565 MHz. By changing the mandated bandwidth to 12.5 kHz and putting the channels 7.5 kHz apart on VHF, you nearly double the available channels.

 

[SpectrumAnalyzer]

The Monoliths Were Playing Catch Up

The blatantly fake & totally useless need for narrowbanding was a catch up ploy by the stagnating sales affected communications monoliths when they saw the cellphone industry come into existence in the eighties with a hundred billion dollar cash cow that didn't even need to market itself, so off their lobby minions went to their congressional bedmates (With cash in paw) who then passed the Holy Decree to the FCC & in the year of our LORD 1992 the narrowbanding mandate in all it's dubious splendor was thrown upon the gullible communications infrastructure clients, in 2001 after 9/11 they outdid themselves with the greatest communications scam of all time with interoperability which is still a complete & total failure to this day so FM, WFM or NFM, does it really matter? If you can hear it clearly, fine, if not, go CB radio, I hear tell that channel 6 is cranking, later.