BCT396 - single system monitoring

[troymail]

OK - I'm sure this question has been asked and answer but I'm going to take the short cut ...

When listening to a single system on my 396, it appears that, even though I believe I have EVERYTHING else turned off, the radio still appears to "step away" and look for something else. I'm basing this on the signal strength meter--- it blinks off for an instant about every 1-2 seconds (I have the hold time for the signal system set to 0). Why?

Can someone list everything that would possibly cause this? Is there a reason wny the radio always checks for something else - even if nothing else is on?

 

[MarkWestin]

Hello,

This is indeed a common question.

Since the radio only has one receiver, it has to "share" a small period of time with any of the following:

Close Call

Weather

Priority functions.

One or more of these is turned on. When they are all off, your interruption will go away.

Mark

 

[troymail]

To my knowledge, they are all off.... maybe I'm just not aware of something that is turned on but is "buried" in a menu somewhere....

CC is off
Priority is off
I'm not completely certain about weather.... but Weather Alt Priority is set to Off....

 

[rdale]

Troy - your radio is fine. When the system delay runs out, it "prepares" to scan another system even if it doesn't have one to scan. You aren't losing anything.

 

[troymail]

Troy - your radio is fine. When the system delay runs out, it "prepares" to scan another system even if it doesn't have one to scan. You aren't losing anything.

If so, UPMan - I'd like to request a way to disable that....

When trying to listen to a P25 (and some other digital systems), the radio loses track of the CC and/or digital data and some conversations are garbled.... I know - a way around this is to set the HOLD time for systems to some high number but then when I decide I want to listen to a 2nd (or third) system at the same time, then I have to change the hold time back to something small - which is somewhat irritating.

I think I remeber asking once before - why can't the radio determine at some point that everything else is disabled and not check for something that doesn't exist.....

 

[rdale]

It shouldn't drop out in the middle of a conversation...

 

[UPMan]

Set up a duplicate system with a system hold time of 255 seconds. When you want to only scan that system, turn on this one and turn off all the others. The brief "break" in apparent reception will now occur only every 4.25 minutes.

rdale is correct, if it is dropping in the middle of a transmission, then you are seeing some other effect.

 

[troymail]

It shouldn't drop out in the middle of a conversation...

nah - it isn't that bad ... it's just that when it jumps out when idle looking for other non-existant activity, sometimes it comes back where a conversation is already going and it garbles it...

Oh well, I was hoping someone would point me to something else I had not thought of to turn off...

Thanks

 

[rfaricy]

If I have my facts straight, the radio will never drop in the middle of a trunked transmission ... unless it is losing signal, and even then, the hold time resets, not to mention the delay is still enforced on the entry. So if it gets signal again, it will stay locked onto either the control channel or the talkgroup's current frequency, until such time that the talkgroup transmission ends, the delay expires, AND the system hold time expires. Only at that time will it "break" for other traffic. This applies to trunked systems. For analog, it will check at the interval you set it to check no matter what (because there is no control channel to lose track of).

So I guess, in essence, as long as the radio is locked onto a control channel or talkgroup's current frequency, it will not check for anything else until it leaves the control channel at the time specified by your system hold time, which would only be after all else has ended and expired.

Priority, WX alert, CC all have absolutely no effect during a trunked transmission. Any "priority" or otherwise interrupting transmissions are inherently, given it's only a single receiver, held until the receiver is free. Further, even with all these items OFF, the system will still "cut out" after the hold time expires.

If any of you know Visual Basic, this would be similar in operation to the "DoEvents" function. It allows for the radio, on the receiving level, to process anything else it needs to.

 

[jimyleg]

Set up a duplicate system with a system hold time of 255 seconds. When you want to only scan that system, turn on this one and turn off all the others. The brief "break" in apparent reception will now occur only every 4.25 minutes.

rdale is correct, if it is dropping in the middle of a transmission, then you are seeing some other effect.

So if it's a p25 system make a duplicate system entry with a hold time of 255 and lockout the other?

 

[RISC777]

troymail & jimyleg :
Try the Hold at 255 ... and the Delay at 3 (or even at 5).


My usual 'default' settings for P25 are Hold at 0 and Delay at 3. The Hold at 0 so it scans 'more quickly' since if there's no activity it jumps right back to scanning any other Systems activated by their System Quick Key(s).

The Delay at 3 so I have time to hit Hold if I want to, but for me it's not too long if I don't want to hit Hold before it goes on scanning.

 

[rdale]

"So if it's a p25 system make a duplicate system entry with a hold time of 255 and lockout the other?"

Yes, if you are just listening to that one system.