Help with new 996P2

[joshman1204]

I just purchased a new uniden bcd996p2 and I am trying to listen to the Austin simulcast as well as the Williamson county simulcast. I have programmed the scanner using freescan and set the fire and ems talkgroups for Williamson county and then everything for Travis county. Everything went fine with the programming and it fired right up and started scanning.

My problem is I only seem to recieve about 10% of the transmissions from either site. I see the radio stop on a channel but I never get any audio. I am using the stock antenna but I do have 5 bars on both sites. The audio I do get is crystal clear with no distortion or problems at all it just doesn't happen very often.


I am new to all of this so not to sure if this is normal or if I've done something wrong.

 

[jonwienke]

996 for simulcast is the wrong tool for the job. Crappy reception but a strong signal is a textbook example of the problem. The SDS100 and SDS200 are the only models actually designed to handle simulcast. Return the 996 and get a SDS instead.

 

[hiegtx]

I just purchased a new uniden bcd996p2 and I am trying to listen to the Austin simulcast as well as the Williamson county simulcast. I have programmed the scanner using freescan and set the fire and ems talkgroups for Williamson county and then everything for Travis county. Everything went fine with the programming and it fired right up and started scanning.

My problem is I only seem to recieve about 10% of the transmissions from either site. I see the radio stop on a channel but I never get any audio. I am using the stock antenna but I do have 5 bars on both sites. The audio I do get is crystal clear with no distortion or problems at all it just doesn't happen very often.


I am new to all of this so not to sure if this is normal or if I've done something wrong.

As jon's already pointed out, simulcast can be a killer for the 996P2, and a number of other scanners. Your best path would be to return the 996P2, if possible, and get an SDS200. The Unication pagers also work, but you are limited to what can be scanned at the same time. Another possibility is the Blue Tail receiver. See this very lengthy thread (now closed) for a many comments on this unit.

For more specific details on Simulcast Distortion, see this Wiki article.
Simulcast digital distortion - The RadioReference Wiki

With the 996P2, or any scanner other than the SDS100 or SDS200, your options for dealing with simulcast are limited. One option is to use less of an antenna, so that hopefully the scanner will only utilize the strongest signal. In a few cases, attenuation might work.

The other work-around is to use a directional antenna, such as a yagi, aimed at one specific tower site. But the downside to that is that you are pretty much limiting your self to only being able to monitor one of the simulcasts, either Austin/Travis County, or Williamson County.

 

[ChrisABQ]

Or you can save $700 and buy two SDR dongles and eliminate the simulcast issues that way.

 

[Ronaldski]

You can since normally they ship with firmware 1.06 upgrade to 1.08.01. See how that works and its free as there are a few items to decode and hear digital better.

BCD996P2FirmwareUpdate < UnidenMan4 < TWiki

info.uniden.com

Lower the antenna, in simulcast, less is more - all you need is one tower.
Also you can try turning on the attenuator to limit the string signals and also

 

[joshman1204]

Thanks for all the help. Lowering the antenna actually helped a ton but it still misses more traffic than it receives.

I ordered an sdr kit from amazon that should be here in a few days. I will give that a try and see if I can get it to work any better. Thanks again for the help!

 

[riverradio68]

Better yet, Grab you and hand full of fortune cookies and go HERE and order you 2 or 3 SDS-200's and wait 2 months for them to arrive .... I ordered 3, got one, the other is floating around in Russia somewhere and the third? Well maybe it'll show up one day who knows ....

 

[ka3aaa]

sdr's dont workk when you turn the computer off unlike a scanner which can run 24 hours a day without the need for a computer attached to it. besides even witha sdr you will miss transmissions. if you were monitoring a large statewide system and there was 50 or so conversations going on at the same exact second how would you listen to the all at the same time???? It's never going to happen let me tell you.

 

[jonwienke]

if you were monitoring a large statewide system and there was 50 or so conversations going on at the same exact second how would you listen to the all at the same time???? It's never going to happen let me tell you.

That's a ridiculous thing to say. You can't monitor all of the sites of a statewide system simultaneously, and most sites have less than 10 voice channels, which limits the number of simultaneous transmissions. But with a SDR, it is possible to monitor all of a site's frequencies simultaneously, as long as they all are close enough together to fit within the SDR's bandwidth (~2MHz for a basic RTL stick, more for higher-end units). And the I/Q receiver in a SDR will at least decode simulcast properly with the right software.