Help me, please!

[jconner00]

I have a radio shack pro-96 scanner listening to the Cobb county P1 area. I have been listening to the Kennesaw, Acworth, Cobb area for almost 5 years on this scanner and occasionally would hear garbled transmission and sometimes when an officer/dispatch keyed up it would be static. I just moved to an apartment on Barrett Pkwy and now I can hardly hear a clear transmission. Almost everything is garbled or static. Can anyone tell me why this is happening and if I can fix it, how?! I am up high on a hill and I can pretty much see Barrett Pkwy from my front door. Seems like signal would not be an issue.

OH and if I am hearing static or garbled transmission if I simply hit the SCAN button or move the scanner slightly I get a clear transmission for a few minutes.

Thanks in advance!

Jason

 

[kf5qgf]

RF noise in the apartment that you didn't have in your former qth?

 

[kg4ojj]

Jason,

I had a similar situation when our public safety agencies went to 800MHz trunking. I found a Nextel tower to be located between my antenna and the system I wanted to hear. I used attenuation (the ATT button on most scanners; or the global ATT selection) and it helped some. You may have that same problem. I tried a homemade directional antenna but it didn't help me much, as the two towers were in nearly the same line-of-sight. In your case, you may be getting inference from other sources.

Do you use an 800MHz antenna on the scanner?

Have you tried attenuating the entire system or individual voice channels?

 

[jconner00]

I am using an 800mhz antenna, but I have not tried attenuating. Honestly, I wasn't really sure what that function was for until a few minutes ago. Will give it a try!

Edit: I went through and turned on Attenuation on every channel, but then I could not hear any transmissions.

 

[WA4HHG]

The scanner isn't perhaps, accidentally set for AM mode, is it?

 

[jconner00]

The scanner isn't perhaps, accidentally set for AM mode, is it?

No, all of the frequencies are set for motorola mode.

 

[trunktracker71]

you could be close to a cell tower i go up that way a few times a year to see my daughter and my pro 96 does fine until i get close to a cell tower and then it goes to pieces those p 25 systems arent worth a hill of beans anyway

 

[jconner00]

you could be close to a cell tower i go up that way a few times a year to see my daughter and my pro 96 does fine until i get close to a cell tower and then it goes to pieces those p 25 systems arent worth a hill of beans anyway

Yea I didn't even think about that. And I WORK for one of the wireless carriers!!! Will probably check to see if I am near one of ours tomorrow haha