Fairfax P25 - SDS100 fine, nothing on BCD436HP

[W3MAL]

I feel like a dummy asking this. I have both a BCD436HP and SDS100 monitoring Fairfax P25 police and fire. They were programmed with the same favorites lists from Sentinel.

Up until recently, both picked up pretty much all calls (although the SDS100 did slightly better from my location).

Today, I'm getting nothing at all on the BCD436HP while the SDS100 is picking up everything and I have no idea what changed. I've compared settings and nothing jumps out at me.

Any suggestions? Again, haven't touched a thing and both used to perform similarly. Environmental factors (bad weather)? I'm stumped.

 

[weyforthr]

Do you have a previous known good database saved in Sentinel? Before making any changes (manually or via Sentinel) to the scanner, a backup should occur. I suspect most people don't do that. As a former database administrator, i have learned one can never have too many backups...

 

[weyforthr]

I feel like a dummy asking this. I have both a BCD436HP and SDS100 monitoring Fairfax P25 police and fire. They were programmed with the same favorites lists from Sentinel.

Up until recently, both picked up pretty much all calls (although the SDS100 did slightly better from my location).

Today, I'm getting nothing at all on the BCD436HP while the SDS100 is picking up everything and I have no idea what changed. I've compared settings and nothing jumps out at me.

Any suggestions? Again, haven't touched a thing and both used to perform similarly. Environmental factors (bad weather)? I'm stumped.

I am getting fair reception of Fairfax P25 from Stafford on an SDS100. RSSI is about -90 dBM, but wavers wildly with high error rate, but despite that, I can hear FD and PD dispatch as well as VSP Fairfax clearly. So I suspect it is a settings issue of some sort. Can you at least receive National Weather Service. As an example 162,55 MHz?

 

[Firemantincan]

Yes, you will get better results from the SDS100 and SDS200 on P25 Phase II simulcast systems than other Uniden P2 Scanners like the BCD436HP and BCD996P2. Single site systems will work fine with those radios, but they do not track simulcast P2 systems very well.

 

[Firemantincan]

You will hear the STARS system well with other P2 Scanners, but you will not hear simulcast systems like FFX, Prince William, or Stafford well without using the SDS line.

 

[LeSueurC]

It's a well known fact throughout Virginia that any simulcast system will be received poorly by the BCD436HP, 536HP, any Whistler. The SDS100 & SDS200 and Unications are the best simulcast capable receivers as well as actual Harris and Motorola radios. It's almost like we need to make a sticky in VA forum about how these units do so poorly on simulcast systems

 

[maus92]

If it suddenly stopped receiving recently, it is either a bad SD card or perhaps a broken antenna connection. Does it receive anything else besides Fairfax P25P2?