help needed

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frfghtr89

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i am in hamilton county (cincinnati) oh. area, i have been trying for a few years to try and find a scanner that will pick up hamilton county fire/police i bought a home patrol years ago but it didn't work, bought a brand new whistler hand held,(don't know the model type off the top of my head) had it programmed to be set up for hamilton county area from scannermaster but apparently it won't receive anything in this area either. so i'm looking for options on what type of unit or units works for this area. any help would be appreciated.
 

tweiss3

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Hamilton County PD/FD are on the statewide Ohio MARCS, which is a simulcast Project 25 Phase 1 system. The only two scanners that can handle simulcast completely are the Uniden SDS100 and SDS200.

Unfortunately that means some serious $$. Fortunately, after you have one of them, you can travel the entire state and get the local PD/FD as most of the state is on MARCS. Also, many other states are going to a statewide system as well.
 

HWG

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i bought a home patrol years ago but it didn't work, bought a brand new whistler hand held,(don't know the model type off the top of my head) had it programmed to be set up for hamilton county area from scannermaster but apparently it won't receive anything in this area either.

What were the issues with these scanners, nothing being received or garbled reception?

Do you still have the Whistler scanner?
 

radioscan

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The Unidens DO NOT handle the simulcast distortion that is prevalent in this area very well.
The Whistler TRX-1 and TRX-2 are much better receiving though the hills and valleys of southwest Ohio.
The Whistler's will prevent the aggravation of garbled and unreadable transmissions, other receivers suffer from.
Use the Wiki here on Radioreference, lots of good information there.
 

HWG

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@frfghtr89, it's so fun to watch the posts when it comes to simulcast. Some will say the SDS's are the only ones that will handle simulcast as they were built for it. It's been very rare for me to see someone champion the Whistler's when it comes to simulcast. It's hard to know what to really go with when it comes to simulcast, unless you can find some way of trying out the different scanners before buying one.
 

baj76

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Feb 6, 2007
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The Unidens DO NOT handle the simulcast distortion that is prevalent in this area very well.
The Whistler TRX-1 and TRX-2 are much better receiving though the hills and valleys of southwest Ohio.
The Whistler's will prevent the aggravation of garbled and unreadable transmissions, other receivers suffer from.
Use the Wiki here on Radioreference, lots of good information there.
for what it's worth, my SDS 100 works great in cincinnati
 

Nasby

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The Unidens DO NOT handle the simulcast distortion that is prevalent in this area very well.
The Whistler TRX-1 and TRX-2 are much better receiving though the hills and valleys of southwest Ohio.
The Whistler's will prevent the aggravation of garbled and unreadable transmissions, other receivers suffer from.
Use the Wiki here on Radioreference, lots of good information there.

When you say Unidens don't handle simulcast, I'm guessing you mean any Uniden other than the SDS units?

I travel often and I've had my SDS100 in nearly every simulcast system in Ohio (including SW Ohio) and it has given me nearly flawless reception.
 

TailGator911

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Fairborn, OH
That is probably the first time I’ve ever heard a positive review of a TRX scanner in a simulcast environment. My TRX-1 was hit and miss, very sporadic coms on the Ohio MARCS system. What it did very well with was DMR and NXDN without any paid upgrades. People debate that the TRX-1 does not ‘properly’ track and decode DMR, but if I am able to follow conversations word for word - who the hell cares? Great scanner, but never have I heard the TRX-1 being applauded for its performance on a simulcast system. That’s a first for me.
 

wa8pyr

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That is probably the first time I’ve ever heard a positive review of a TRX scanner in a simulcast environment. My TRX-1 was hit and miss, very sporadic coms on the Ohio MARCS system. What it did very well with was DMR and NXDN without any paid upgrades. People debate that the TRX-1 does not ‘properly’ track and decode DMR, but if I am able to follow conversations word for word - who the hell cares? Great scanner, but never have I heard the TRX-1 being applauded for its performance on a simulcast system. That’s a first for me.

Concur, gotta love semantics. As long as you're following the conversation, as far as I'm concerned the radio is trunk-tracking... it's just doing it in a different way.

Personally my TRX-1 and earlier GRE/Whistler models tend to work pretty well on simulcast, but that's because I'm several miles away from the nearest tower site; get in closer where I'm in the midst of several sites and it's a different story. That's when the SDS100 comes into play.

But there are trade-offs; the memory management of the SDS100/200 is not user-friendly, where the "scan list" method of the Whistler is superior, in my opinion.
 

WB9YBM

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i have been trying for a few years to try and find a scanner that will pick up hamilton county fire/police i'm looking for options on what type of unit or units works for this area. any help would be appreciated.

It sounds like this might be more of an antenna issue--getting at least a moderate set up, and locating it (if possible) above the roof line--because even the best scanner in the world can't hear anything without a decent set of ears.
 

frfghtr89

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Nov 16, 2005
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cincinnati, oh
It sounds like this might be more of an antenna issue--getting at least a moderate set up, and locating it (if possible) above the roof line--because even the best scanner in the world can't hear anything without a decent set of ears.
the scanner i have now (whistler ws 1040) is a hand held, kinda hard to put an antenna "above the roof line"
 

WB9YBM

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the scanner i have now (whistler ws 1040) is a hand held, kinda hard to put an antenna "above the roof line"

If it's like other hand-helds I've seen it's got a BNC connector for the standard rubber-duck antenna--an antenna cable going to some other antenna would be a possibility...
 
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