Cell phone interference?

[K2KOH]

Does anyone else get some weird sounds from their 536 if the cell phone happens to be somewhat nearby? My cell is a couple of feet away, but I can hear a strange whirring like sound from the scanner (not a harddrive, I have SSD). Just curious. I move the phone, it goes away. Just weird

 

[nessnet]

In the TDMA days, you could definitely hear the bursts as RFI on some poorly shielded devices.

Possible, I suppose.
With LTE/5G, it probably depends on the band being used?
Are you rural, so the cell phone is putting out max?

 

[K2KOH]

In the TDMA days, you could definitely hear the bursts as RFI on some poorly shielded devices.

Possible, I suppose.
With LTE/5G, it probably depends on the band being used?
Are you rural, so the cell phone is putting out max?

Yeah that sounds about right. Putnam County, NY...cell towers here are crap. Thanks!

 

[n1chu]

Anything that emits RF will affect the receiver if it’s close enough. I’m sure others have experienced reception problems associated with other devices. In some cases the radio might lock up and not emit any noise at all, or overload the front end to a degree that makes you think the radio can’t hear as good as it’s supposed to... and we see an irate post stating the scanner is a piece of junk! When all that really needed to be done was to relocate the scanner or the device that was causing the interference. It’s rare that this happens but it could save on spending money on outside antennas and feed line. There was one case I am aware of that only required relocating the scanner where the scanner worked on just the supplied stock antenna. But that was learned after the owner had taken advice and purchased an outside antenna and good feed line like Beldon 9913 or it’s equivalent. It was t money poorly spent, but in this particular case, not needed.

 

[bchappuie]

Cell phone modulation is spurious by design, and anything is possible. Not so much now with LTE, as with TDMA and UMTS back in the day.

 

[IAmSixNine]

Not sure about the TDMA days but GSM and IDEN would interfere with some of my scanners many years ago.
I also had a TDMA Sprint phone and never had interference.. The ATT GSM and Nextel IDEN did cause a buzzing noise.
I have never heard any interference on LTE or 5G but depending on who your carrier is and location you could still be using GSM.

 

[jonwienke]

It all depends on the frequency band(s) the phone is using, and scanner is monitoring. You're more likely to get cellular bleedover on 800MHz than VHF, unless something is wrong with the shielding, and it's bleeding directly into the audio amp.