teufler
Member
monitoring tonight and all is quiet in st louis. Using a 396xt and it has worked because even though st louis said p2, they were p1 for the most part.
has st louis, on slater gone all p2?
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Though my reception is scratchy at best I heard them last night. Mostly south county area PD. So I guess that means it was working. Every now and then with my 396xt certain trunking systems "seem" to fail or stop working for some reason. Sometimes just turning off and on the scanner helps. Or maybe removing and reinserting a battery. Only one time did I have to re-enter an entire system (Greene Co MO) to get it to work again. That was after having it in my scanner for years.
teufler
Member
reloaded several times, even a reduced created file, slater, two st louis sites, a group of st louis districts and one muni group of other pds, and it been quiet. Same antenna, same radio, same location, signal strength shows 2 to 3 bars so I am detecting these sites.
No problems here as well with any talkgroups that still carry some in the clear chatter.
That was around 1 AM this morning. I was hearing the Covert TG, a bunch of stuff from Lambert and the occasional District dispatch channel car. All on the North Tower.
I notice at times that things like high humidity such as when it is going to turn foggy or is foggy, will play tricks with simulcast site reception.
One day I'll be getting 100% decodes and then the weather will change a little and my decode level will drop.
And by a fairly large amount.
Using something like Pro96com, I usually show 105% decode of the cities North site but when the weather changes, that 105% will drop below 50% for a short time period.
I see the same with the Slater South site 102 as well.
Even moving the Yagi around when the decode percentage drops off will usually not bring back my normal perfect reception.
I can also see it in the bargraph s-meter in a 4 or 536HP. I normally see whatever full bars is, (5 I think) but when reception is taking a dive, I loose a bar or two.
Oddly, it does not do this when it is pouring out, only when it is high humidity or approaching the dew point do I see the reception quality drops.
It's kind of weird.
During those periods, my decode of Slater South 102 and the STL City North site drop and I get simulcast distortion or nothing sometimes if the radio did not hear a command to steer to a voice channel during a voice channel grant. That's mostly on the XT series like the 996 and 396XT models or any model with so called Auto P25 tuning and no true Manual P25 settings like the x36HP models or the HP1 have using one of the beta firmware versions. Even my old 996T will still decode the audio just fine when decode rates drop but that is because it too has a true Manual P25 setting.
I've been watching and waiting for one of the sites in our area to start playing with Phase II but I've not logged anything Phase II yet. About everything is broadcasting it in the CC data now but still no Phase II chatter.
That was around 1 AM this morning. I was hearing the Covert TG, a bunch of stuff from Lambert and the occasional District dispatch channel car. All on the North Tower.
I notice at times that things like high humidity such as when it is going to turn foggy or is foggy, will play tricks with simulcast site reception.
One day I'll be getting 100% decodes and then the weather will change a little and my decode level will drop.
And by a fairly large amount.
Using something like Pro96com, I usually show 105% decode of the cities North site but when the weather changes, that 105% will drop below 50% for a short time period.
I see the same with the Slater South site 102 as well.
Even moving the Yagi around when the decode percentage drops off will usually not bring back my normal perfect reception.
I can also see it in the bargraph s-meter in a 4 or 536HP. I normally see whatever full bars is, (5 I think) but when reception is taking a dive, I loose a bar or two.
Oddly, it does not do this when it is pouring out, only when it is high humidity or approaching the dew point do I see the reception quality drops.
It's kind of weird.
During those periods, my decode of Slater South 102 and the STL City North site drop and I get simulcast distortion or nothing sometimes if the radio did not hear a command to steer to a voice channel during a voice channel grant. That's mostly on the XT series like the 996 and 396XT models or any model with so called Auto P25 tuning and no true Manual P25 settings like the x36HP models or the HP1 have using one of the beta firmware versions. Even my old 996T will still decode the audio just fine when decode rates drop but that is because it too has a true Manual P25 setting.
I've been watching and waiting for one of the sites in our area to start playing with Phase II but I've not logged anything Phase II yet. About everything is broadcasting it in the CC data now but still no Phase II chatter.
You said you are getting three bars, for the most part. Is the scanner decoding the site you are trying to get? You did say SLATER right? So either 101 or 102 would be what you are looking for.
Are you getting St Charles Co site 103? That should be a simple and strong signal out your way. If you are then at least you know the scanner is working.
Just a thought or two.
Are you getting St Charles Co site 103? That should be a simple and strong signal out your way. If you are then at least you know the scanner is working.
Just a thought or two.
teufler
Member
no st charles if fine, just the signal dropped on my vertical. Its a larsen dual 5/8 wave. Went to a 7 element beam and all is back to normal. Just was not picking up the st louis towers with the vertical. Coax is good, using coax with beam. Like the st louis antenna have been re aimed and rather than a 360 coverage, they seem ore directional, away from St Charles Cty.
Who knows these days what goes on with the usage of each systems towers/sites. Directional - Omni directional - lower power - higher power. Who knows. And we better not have our signal interfere with the other guys' signal. That would be bad. That does not sound like a good way to do radio to me. I never heard of the old radio systems on VHF/UHF interfering with neighboring cities/counties. Ever. Oh well.
902
Member
No, you never heard stories of the interference get out. There was PLENTY of interference.
Actually,
St Louis Counties Muni-West used to be on 155.130.
Some years ago they switched Muni-West to 154.875 because 155.130 was interfering with an agency in Illinois.
I used to get full strength signals when Muni-West was on 155.130 as its signal came off the EOC towers at Olive & Ladue.
When they swapped with the 1st precinct and went to 154.875, I could no longer receive dispatch from inside my apartment. That tower comes from one of the counties other old VHF sites or maybe even Clayton.
Even Chesterfield cars could no longer communicate with their dispatcher when using portables in my apartment complex. They had no problems when they were on 155.130 as the antennas were just a mile or two down Olive from me at the old EOC.
I never really understood the swap of frequencies as the old interfering frequency of 155.130 was still on the air at the same power levels it was on when it served Muni-West. Maybe it was not the dispatch signals that were causing interference to the neighbor in Illinois and it was the mobile radios on 154.875. When they swapped frequencies, that would have moved all the mobile transmissions on 154.875 out of north county and into Muni-West's areas. Precinct 1 went to 155.130 which apparently did not cause any problems with the users in Illinois.
I never did learn who it was in Illinois that was being interfered with though.
I do know when Muni-West moved to 154.875, I started getting signals out of Illinois from the Clinton County area. Mostly Clinton County themselves but also Breese and Williamsburg. They all used the same frequency but used different PL's.
They used a repeater on 154.875 in Clinton County so I could also hear the mobiles. Basically, if you wanted to monitor Muni-West after they swapped with the 1st precinct, you had to use a receiver with CTCSS ability otherwise you would hear the more active Illinois users over in Clinton County! They talked a lot.
I did most of my monitoring with Icom R7000 and R9000's which did not offer PL capabilities. I had to buy or build tone boards and set them to 103.5 Hz so I could monitor Muni-West and not have to put up with the Illinois stations.
It all worked out in the end as I'd always wanted to add PL and DPL capabilities into at least one of my old Icom's. This kind of forced me to build them! I bought one board that just needed to be wired in and then I built another. I used a BCD encoder or roller type switch that I mounted outside the radios to change the PL or DPL codes.
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