Do nearby scanners affect eachother?

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I have noticed some very strang things when putting two scanners near eachother while both are running. It seems that with some types of monitoring performance suffers. When monitoring my local trunked P25 PD system, when they are both going, one scanner which has a special directional rooftop antenna (designed to do best in this simulcast system), which normaly works great, does worse when the handheld is operating nearby. Oddly enough, the handheld does BETTER when near the base scanner while both are monitoring the same system.

Of course these are just casual observations, nothing scientific, so who knows. But can one scanner operating near another affect the operation of the other?
 

af5rn

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Ditto. Lots of problems with them locking each other up or inducing intermod with conventional scanners, but I too have had no problems with trunking scanners interacting.
 

gmclam

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scanner vs scanner

The direct answer to your question is YES, sometimes. All scanners have "birdie frequencies", in which they emit signals on a set of frequencies. Each model has a different set of birdie frequencies. Reception of signals over-the-air on a scanner's birdie frequencies is problematic at best (fortunately they are usually not freqs we want to program). So if you've got 2 different scanners next to each other, then typically the combined list of birdie frequencies can not be used.

I laughed when in another thread here someone recently wrote that the first thing they do when they get a new scanner is to open it up and take out all the shielding. Well for those who do that expect a LOT more interference.

Lastly, I run several different model scanners all the time; although they all are RS models. The only time I've had problems is when one of my older scanners is stopped on a specific frequency and another is trying to listen to a different specific frequency. Fortunately it is a rare problem for me.
 

af5rn

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I laughed when in another thread here someone recently wrote that the first thing they do when they get a new scanner is to open it up and take out all the shielding. Well for those who do that expect a LOT more interference.
LOL! Well, that was me and it was definitely just a Wasteland joke. In fact, years back, I was having so much trouble with two identical scanners interfering with each other that I put an 1/8 inch sheet of lead shielding between the two to stop it.
 

Turbo68

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I have never had any problems with scanners interfiring with each other.

Regards Lino.
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n1das

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LOL! Well, that was me and it was definitely just a Wasteland joke. In fact, years back, I was having so much trouble with two identical scanners interfering with each other that I put an 1/8 inch sheet of lead shielding between the two to stop it.

I've had all of those problems over the years with various scanners, new and old. The newer trunktrackers aren't totally immune either but in general perform much better due to their better designs.
 

LEH

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I normally have two or more scanners running in close proximity while driving. I've only had one problem over the years where one interfered with another and it wasn't a continuous problem.

Had two systems running, one in each scanner. There were two frequencies that were either a harmonic or an IF (didn't really try to check at the time) of each other. If one scanner stopped on one of those frequencies, the other scanner would stop when it reached the other.

I was traveling, so this didn't happen very often, but enough that I was able to figure it out. I don't even recall the frequencies.
 
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