Yeah, that was one of the first things I bought (the 800mhz) - seems to help a little, still many dead spots, especially I've noticed in 5 points south, but then randomly everywhere around the city.
Yep, both North and East are entered correctly. Like I said, I hear them fine for some periods of time (odly enough it is usually is very late at night or early in the morning), occassionally during the day and evening, but usually not.
No, they are not locked out - thats for sure, unless I am specifically listening to only a few channels. But I always unlock them back, and double check when I am specifically trying to listen to a particular channel and it is not picking up.
I also have problems with receiving signals sometimes but no audio. Do you have this problem? Where the display will stop on a channel, the lightning bolt will light up, and you can tell there is traffic going on, because it starts, then stops, then starts again, flowing like it usually does when there is radio traffic - but no audio. This usually lasts for only a few minutes, sometimes I have to turn off my scanner and turn it back on - In a year I haven't really figured out how to troubleshoot that problem.
I just assumed these were either problems with this first radio shack digital scanner, or problems with birminghams system.