GRE PSR600

[EJB]

I recently purchased a GRE PSR600 from a friend of mine.

I was hoping to use it for local (within 5-10 miles) towers and conventional systems and for towers within 30-50 miles.

I am located in Burlington, which is about 10 miles east of Hamilton Ontario and about 45 miles west of Toronto.

I am using a KS3 Antenna. It does a fine job for local systems and for our local tower in our provincial Fleetnet system. I took both the scanner and the antenna on the balcony today to see if being outside with less obtructions if this scanner could pick up the fleetnet towers outside my area.

No dice, no signal or too weak.

I also have a Home Patrol scanner. I can get more distant towers with my home patrol using the KS3 and an antenna that I put together myself for our VHF Hi Fleetnet system.

So the HP will easily decode towers that are up to 30-50 miles away for me while the PSR600 doesnt hear them at all.

I really don't get this, how can the PSR600 be absolutely deaf compared to a Home Patrol. Again, the Home Patrol can easily decode towers (for those in the Greater Toronto area or are familiar) such as Brantford and Cayuga to the W/SW and Toronto area towers such as Mowat, Mississuaga Brittania.

I really didnt expect this. I regard the Home Patrol to be deaf itself at picking up distant towers. I kinda expected this psr600 to be able to drag in towers that were more than 30 miles away as long as a decent antenna was hooked up to it.

Everything is programmed properly.

I am dissapointed by this radio if this is all it can do.

In addition to my HP I use an old Uniden 250 and it does a better job than the HP at drawing in more distant towers, I have borrowed a Uniden 996xt and was able to scan local and out of the area Fleetnet towers with no issues.

Way back when, the Uniden 396T did as good a job as the HP.

I was under the impression that GRE scanners were as good as Uniden, if not better in being less deaf but it's not even close.

If this is the way it is, if it can only be used for local trunking systems than I will deal with it but I am dissapointed by just how deaf this radio is. The digital audio sounds better than the HP for most systems but it"s not enough for me to be satisfied with the scanner.

I would love some feedback on this. There have got to be a few people here who own this scanner and a HP, or 996xt & 396t or XT.

 

[bigcam406]

I own one and I have no problems picking up Fleetnet(3 towers).I suspect if you try a different antenna,or,make sure the attenuator is on Global and not on might be a help.if not,i suspect there might be a defect in your radio.

 

[EJB]

I own one and I have no problems picking up Fleetnet(3 towers).I suspect if you try a different antenna,or,make sure the attenuator is on Global and not on might be a help.if not,i suspect there might be a defect in your radio.

I uploaded my WIN500 software. Check the settings, am I doing anything to restrict the scanner from scoring towers?

Something isnt kosher as again, the Home Patrol will bring in easily all the towers 30-40 miles away line of sight. the PSR600 cant even hear any of the grinding noises.

 

[EJB]

I uploaded my WIN500 software. Check the settings, am I doing anything to restrict the scanner from scoring towers?

Something isnt kosher as again, the Home Patrol will bring in easily all the towers 30-40 miles away line of sight. the PSR600 cant even hear any of the grinding noises.

Here is a screenshot of my setup that I cannot get that I should. The control channels here are for Cayuga, Brantford and Simcoe.

Is my ROAM set up properly? I dont know if I am doing anything wrong.

I can scan local tower like Charlton, the band plan is correct and I do not have anything set to ATT.

 

[rwier]

I recently purchased a GRE PSR600 from a friend of mine.

I was hoping to use it for local (within 5-10 miles) towers and conventional systems and for towers within 30-50 miles.

I am located in Burlington, which is about 10 miles east of Hamilton Ontario and about 45 miles west of Toronto.

I am using a KS3 Antenna. It does a fine job for local systems and for our local tower in our provincial Fleetnet system. I took both the scanner and the antenna on the balcony today to see if being outside with less obtructions if this scanner could pick up the fleetnet towers outside my area.

No dice, no signal or too weak.

I also have a Home Patrol scanner. I can get more distant towers with my home patrol using the KS3 and an antenna that I put together myself for our VHF Hi Fleetnet system.

So the HP will easily decode towers that are up to 30-50 miles away for me while the PSR600 doesnt hear them at all.

I really don't get this, how can the PSR600 be absolutely deaf compared to a Home Patrol. Again, the Home Patrol can easily decode towers (for those in the Greater Toronto area or are familiar) such as Brantford and Cayuga to the W/SW and Toronto area towers such as Mowat, Mississuaga Brittania.

I really didnt expect this. I regard the Home Patrol to be deaf itself at picking up distant towers. I kinda expected this psr600 to be able to drag in towers that were more than 30 miles away as long as a decent antenna was hooked up to it.

Everything is programmed properly.

I am dissapointed by this radio if this is all it can do.

In addition to my HP I use an old Uniden 250 and it does a better job than the HP at drawing in more distant towers, I have borrowed a Uniden 996xt and was able to scan local and out of the area Fleetnet towers with no issues.

Way back when, the Uniden 396T did as good a job as the HP.

I was under the impression that GRE scanners were as good as Uniden, if not better in being less deaf but it's not even close.

If this is the way it is, if it can only be used for local trunking systems than I will deal with it but I am dissapointed by just how deaf this radio is. The digital audio sounds better than the HP for most systems but it"s not enough for me to be satisfied with the scanner.

I would love some feedback on this. There have got to be a few people here who own this scanner and a HP, or 996xt & 396t or XT.

Ownership of these scanners is no guarantee that the owner's opinions are anything more than subjective and/or anecdotal. However, your situation is very favorable to achieving objective and factual data without reliance on the opinions of others. I am assuming that you do not have the Extreme Upgrade to your HP-1. With it you would be able to use the HP-1(E) as a tool to analyze the signal strength and signal quality as it is received at the point where the antenna feed meets the scanner.

I posted thousands of words on this subject about two years ago. It was helpful to a small handful of readers, but it was, in general, not well received by the general RR Forum population. Subjective and anecdotal opinions are the dynamos that drive the Forum.

 

[EJB]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BB10; Kbd) AppleWebKit/537.10+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.1.0.1483 Mobile Safari/537.10+)

I recently purchased a GRE PSR600 from a friend of mine.

I was hoping to use it for local (within 5-10 miles) towers and conventional systems and for towers within 30-50 miles.

I am located in Burlington, which is about 10 miles east of Hamilton Ontario and about 45 miles west of Toronto.

I am using a KS3 Antenna. It does a fine job for local systems and for our local tower in our provincial Fleetnet system. I took both the scanner and the antenna on the balcony today to see if being outside with less obtructions if this scanner could pick up the fleetnet towers outside my area.

No dice, no signal or too weak.

I also have a Home Patrol scanner. I can get more distant towers with my home patrol using the KS3 and an antenna that I put together myself for our VHF Hi Fleetnet system.

So the HP will easily decode towers that are up to 30-50 miles away for me while the PSR600 doesnt hear them at all.

I really don't get this, how can the PSR600 be absolutely deaf compared to a Home Patrol. Again, the Home Patrol can easily decode towers (for those in the Greater Toronto area or are familiar) such as Brantford and Cayuga to the W/SW and Toronto area towers such as Mowat, Mississuaga Brittania.

I really didnt expect this. I regard the Home Patrol to be deaf itself at picking up distant towers. I kinda expected this psr600 to be able to drag in towers that were more than 30 miles away as long as a decent antenna was hooked up to it.

Everything is programmed properly.

I am dissapointed by this radio if this is all it can do.

In addition to my HP I use an old Uniden 250 and it does a better job than the HP at drawing in more distant towers, I have borrowed a Uniden 996xt and was able to scan local and out of the area Fleetnet towers with no issues.

Way back when, the Uniden 396T did as good a job as the HP.

I was under the impression that GRE scanners were as good as Uniden, if not better in being less deaf but it's not even close.

If this is the way it is, if it can only be used for local trunking systems than I will deal with it but I am dissapointed by just how deaf this radio is. The digital audio sounds better than the HP for most systems but it"s not enough for me to be satisfied with the scanner.

I would love some feedback on this. There have got to be a few people here who own this scanner and a HP, or 996xt & 396t or XT.

Ownership of these scanners is no guarantee that the owner's opinions are anything more than subjective and/or anecdotal. However, your situation is very favorable to achieving objective and factual data without reliance on the opinions of others. I am assuming that you do not have the Extreme Upgrade to your HP-1. With it you would be able to use the HP-1(E) as a tool to analyze the signal strength and signal quality as it is received at the point where the antenna feed meets the scanner.

I posted thousands of words on this subject about two years ago. It was helpful to a small handful of readers, but it was, in general, not well received by the general RR Forum population. Subjective and anecdotal opinions are the dynamos that drive the Forum.

Wow.

I don't know what to say to this comment.

It doesn't help me out at all, at least I don't think it does.

Listen, I'm no bumpkin here. I don't have the extreme HP1 but I have been using Trunk 88 for years and I understand signal strength.

I get a 100% signal on my close Fleetnet tower. I get 100% on both the other towers I mentioned using my Home Patrol, my Pro2045, my Uniden 250 and I always had a clear decodable signal when my go to scanner was a 396T.

I assumed then that anything I got would be compatible to the list above or even better.

I bought this from a friend of mine. He has a tower. I have the KS3 I mentioned and a homebrew cut specifically to receive in the VHF Hi range.

I am 100 feet up, and facing the towers I mentioned.

The PSR allows me to analize my signal for my closest tower, the one I don't have trouble receiving and its at 99%.

I have a 1/4 Larsen on my car, I don't really have seen it perform much better than what I mentioned but I could try.


Why did you comment here? What purpose did it serve?

I spoke to about 5 people whom are friends and or I trust and they are familiar with my situation. Never did I think that I would have this issue.

 

[bigcam406]

im seeing that you havnt set up your custom tables

 

[EJB]

im seeing that you havnt set up your custom tables

Here they are, set up

 

[bigcam406]

ok,the previous attachment didn't show them.i really don't know what else I can tell you.i know when I loaded my control channel freq's I inputted both the control and alternate.i compared my settings to yours last night and I cant seem to see anything you did that would cause the problem.im stumped as well.

 

[cherubim]

You do realize that the PSR-600 suffers from front-end overload ? This results in reduced sensitivity and is alleviated in part by enabling the attenuator or even using the stock telescopic antenna.

 

[bigcam406]

I think I found your problem on your tables the low and high channels are wrong the lows should be 380,the highs should be 759,and your offsets are correct at 380,579,and 632.make those changes and see what happens.i couldn't tell last night because your tables wernt shown,but im pretty sure I found your problem.

 

[EJB]

You do realize that the PSR-600 suffers from front-end overload ? This results in reduced sensitivity and is alleviated in part by enabling the attenuator or even using the stock telescopic antenna.

Hello.

I realize it now, I am very close to at least 2 cell towers and there is a new set of antennas that are up on the building two down from us. I live in suburban Greater Toronto-Hamilton and while the particular 'burb' I live in isn't extremely dense, I live in an area that has the highest population density in the city, comparable with what you would see in Toronto. So with 6 slab-concrete towers with a few football fields there are 2, now maybe 3, cell companies that have towers up.

I played around with different antennas, When I bought the scanner it didnt come with the stock antenna, I might have a few of them around but then with something similiar to the stock antenna I wont have a chance to pull in the towers I thought I should be getting and setting the att on will totally render this impossible.


Thank you for your response to my thread, I do now understand that this might just be the way it is. I either live with it, spend big $ on an antenna or use this scanner to monitor systems in my immediate (region/county, not the county over and away).

 

[EJB]

ok,the previous attachment didn't show them.i really don't know what else I can tell you.i know when I loaded my control channel freq's I inputted both the control and alternate.i compared my settings to yours last night and I cant seem to see anything you did that would cause the problem.im stumped as well.

BigCam:

The custom table that you mentioned to use, I changed it to your custom list. I dont know if it made any difference, the customs list that I posted here works fine on my Charlton tower scan list but I changed it anyways.

It didn't do any difference but please see below, to the next post, I found the solution!!!

 

[EJB]

You do realize that the PSR-600 suffers from front-end overload ? This results in reduced sensitivity and is alleviated in part by enabling the attenuator or even using the stock telescopic antenna.

Success! I put on the ATT on this distant set of towers and voila, it works great now. I get a good enough decode rate on this to now listen into the action that I wanted to!!!

I really appreciate your guidance and help with this issue, as well to BigCam

I hope to play it forward in the future

 

[Former_GRE_Tech]

Using a highly directional outdoor antenna with some receiver attenuation should minimize the desense.

 

[bigcam406]

I own one and I have no problems picking up Fleetnet(3 towers).I suspect if you try a different antenna,or,make sure the attenuator is on Global and not on might be a help.if not,i suspect there might be a defect in your radio.

well,i was on the right track concerning the ATT.the custom table figures I told you to change are in a sticky in the Ontario forum for programming Fleetnet for your GRE600.im glad you can enjoy your scanner now.glad to help.by the way,i have a cell tower 100 ft across the street from me,and it doesn't cause too much interference.i guess location has a lot to do with it.

 

[bigcam406]

BTW,the factory antenna doesnt work that good.im using a Comet W100 wide range antenna,works really well for VHF.

 

[EJB]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BB10; Kbd) AppleWebKit/537.10+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.1.0.1483 Mobile Safari/537.10+)

Generally the GRE and RS (I don't know if the Pro93 was a GRE scanner)scanners from my past were any good for the frequencies in Fleetnet. They weren't bad for 800 mgh systems but for the most part, all I listened to was local.

I didn't get the stock antenna with this GRE600, didn't really need one. I have a few old antennas for my ancient PRO2045 lying around and like I mentioned, I use mag mounts and have erected a metal shield and they face out towards the S/SW.

You're in Oshawa, are you up in the "shwas" burbs to the north and high up or at least close to the lake?

You would then get a clear shot at towers like Mowat, Fonthill, heck, even Skylon.

When I first moved out to the GTA over 20 yrs ago as my roommate and I drove on the 401 from Montreal past Belleville we noticed that there was a rock station on 97.7 FM.

I was working in the music biz then, so was my roomie, and Montreal has a rock station on 97.7.

We were shocked that the 97.7 that we were pulling in as far as Quinte and Belleville was in St.Kitts!

 

[bigcam406]

im approx a mile north of the lake.i dont regularily pickup the afforementioned towers,only on occasion during summer months.and i pick up 97.7 FM just fine.