Home Patrol-1... My Review

[Bosse]

VHF reception.

Received my HP1 on Friday, and so far I really like the scanner, but I also have an issue with the VHF reception. I am wondering if it is a flaw with some of the units. I also have a BCT-15, and BC246T and I have no problem hearing distant channels. The UHF receive is very hot, and the lower VHF(aircraft) seems to be good as well. I will be contacting Uniden to ask some questions, and may try exchanging the unit. I did some travelling around, and could only receive the very local frequencies, and even they are weak....there are some local issues with the database, but I will be trying to help sort them out along with others.
Terry
VE6LL

 

[bfpdb]

Let me put my 2 cents into this, i just got a new HP1 and it wont receive anything. have updated firmware and updated database and still nothing. It acts as if it has no antenna hooked up at all. Needless to say i am very unhappy after spending $500 and selling a very nice pro2096 to help defray the cost.

 

[WX4JCW]

I have had mine for a while, one bad thing is my wife bumped the GPS Cable and broke the plastic covering the pins of the GPS port, but it still works and i have secured it and it seems ok, im afraid to ask how much it would cost to fix it
Seriously i have been listening and traveling around and have Monitored alot with this HP-1 and love it, most issues i have had are database related and i am sure eventually it will be resolved.

Great Job Uniden

i do get some birdies but no where near as many as other radios i have had, so the HP-1 is a keeper.

States Monitored so far
Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho, Nebraska, South Dakota, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Montana, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Wyoming, Missouri and Alberta in Canada

i may have missed some states but other than database geocoding issues it has worked perfectly with a Comtelco antenna from Scanner Master

 

[Infinitig37x]

Got one today and have to say I'm liking it, I have had just about all of the new digi radios made too date. This one receives better then Any of them period! I'm pulling in services I never could before, opp digi sounds great great Job uniden

 

[kruser]

After reading other comments from other HP-1 users, and additional side-by-side comparisons with my other radios, I am requesting an exchange of the radio. I am working with the vendor to have a replacement. I will let you know how it goes with the next radio. Hopefully this will take care of the first items on my "cons" list. There are still many other cons that I am surprised no one has mentioned. I am reading other posts about poor P25 simulcast performance, so I am not confident my replacement will address the problem with P25 simulcast multi-path distortion.

Regards,

Joe

So Joe,

Did you ever get a replacement and if so, how did it compare to your original? Curious!

 

[EJB]

Let me put my 2 cents into this, i just got a new HP1 and it wont receive anything. have updated firmware and updated database and still nothing. It acts as if it has no antenna hooked up at all. Needless to say i am very unhappy after spending $500 and selling a very nice pro2096 to help defray the cost.

I dont mean to be rude but I have a feeling you arent using it correctly. One of the ways to get around the location feature is to use the database and create a favorites list that you make yourself. If you are within range of the frequencies you will be able to hear things you create from the database.

Unless you are 100's of miles away from civilization create favorites that you used to listen to with other scanners and then let 'er rip. You may re-think your above decision.

I found that the HP 1 is more sensitive than my old 396T and does well enough on the air band. The antenna that comes with it is a POC but I dont expect Uniden to provide good antennas. Maybe this is the reason that you cannot hear anything. Again, I do not know where you exactly live, I live in an extremely populated area and there are numerous systems, etc active. I do have a friend who lives in another building next to me who is from your state and she can inform me if you live in an area where you cannot recieve frequencies.

If you need help PM me

 

[kruser]

Well, I just bought an HP-1 three days ago. So far it is working very well.

My VHF High and Low reception is superb plus my trouble system is also working better than my PSR600 and 500.

That is a simulcast P25 system. My old 996T did rather good on that system but my 396XT and 996XT are poor. I attribute the problem to the lack of the manual P25 decode rate that was taken away from the XT models. On the older T model, I can adjust the decode rate manually and it helps a ton. I wish Uniden would bring that back for the T series. The GRE radios have always worked the best over the Unidens, even the 996T, for this simulcast system. The HP-1 is going to give the GRE some competition though.

For the HP-1, the decode rate cannot even be seen from what I know but there is no need to adjust it as the scanner works great on this P25 system.
In fact, it works great for all P25 sites I’ve monitored with it.
I've not done extensive comparisons yet but so far I'm impressed.

It is a whole new learning curve though.
I do hate the fact that there is no scan or resume button plus the lack of a user adjustable delay setting. That is poor design.

Otherwise, I like it!

 

[K5ARK]

Guys thanks for all your critiques and info on this new scanner, as soon as it hit the market I was interested in getting one... nice to see owners reviews first.

 

[bfpdb]

EJB
The reason i got the HP1 was so i woudlnt have to Program it, but the one i received wouldnt even receive the weather radio, I sent it back and am awaiting the arrival of another unit, i hope it work better. It is advertised that you can input your zipcode and it will play, i hope that is true.

W5CI Central ,AR

 

[EJB]

EJB
The reason i got the HP1 was so i woudlnt have to Program it, but the one i received wouldnt even receive the weather radio, I sent it back and am awaiting the arrival of another unit, i hope it work better. It is advertised that you can input your zipcode and it will play, i hope that is true.

W5CI Central ,AR

When I first opened mine I loaded in my postal code but it was giving me frequencies for the regions (counties) near mine but not mine.

After getting a bit of help I created my own fave list, simply by building my own systems to listen so to speak. Everything after that fell into place.

The sound quality is good, it can be used as a portable scanner, albeit not as small as the 396.
The one thing I would like to see and would pay (read this Uniden staff!!!!) for is Radio Id's.

When you get your next one be patient and I guarantee you will enjoy it. It is a cool scanner

Merry Christmas

Eric

 

[Kumba]

Bought one of these as a Christmas gift for my mother, and I can definitely state that I'll be hanging onto my BCD396XT. But for her, this little device is perfect, especially once I set it up for the local county system.

That said, its zipcode thingamajig is broke. Trying to initially get it set up with Charles County, MD's system, I punched in a local zipcode and cut the range down to 0.5 miles, and the device selected over 900 channels from about 20 jurisdictions in the DC Area. Talking, it tried scanning channels in Loudon County, VA, which road-mileage-wise is a good 50mi away (maybe 20mi direct).

Can't comment on receiver quality. There's this large cell tower about 100ft from my home that apparently overamps any scanner I have, rendering even the local county system unlistenable most of the time. I can get by on the 396XT by cutting the squelch down to 0, but I get frequent decoding errors. Manageable on the 396XT because I can easily skip the channel, but the HP-1, being dumbed down quite a bit, doesn't make it easy to skip a channel, so cutting the squelch down is a bad idea. On the plus side, I know it'll run fine at my mother's house. The signal is so strong there, I can get 5 full bars on my 396XT without the antenna attached.

The touchscreen, however, is really, really nice. I dare say it's better than the touchscreen on a lot of modern-day smartphones, including the all-glass iPhone. Not a single typo due to touch screen sensitivity (just my own fat fingering). Uniden spent some time on that feature, and it shows. Interface is nice, intuitive, although the channel selection when building a favourites list is a bit arduous. But this type of interface has a lot of promise on a future iteration of the XT series.

Now if only Uniden would remember us lowly 396/996XT users and fix the Unit ID limitations and decoding problems...


edit:
One thing missing is the ability to set a hold time. Per that crappy radio tower nearby, the HP-1 sometimes locks onto a channel and then never leaves it.

edit2:
This thing has 13 weather channels. When did this change? Even at the latest Skywarn class I went to, they stated they only operate 7 weather frequencies.

 

[scott123]

Having just heard about this radio a couple days ago, I am in love with it and can't wait to get one, to the point of scrounging every penny I can until I have the $500 or so. My area went digital recently and the thing preventing me from getting a regular digital scanner was the complexity of programming etc. This radio looks great ... just my two cents. One more thing, I'm not a noob ... been scanning for close to 40 years.

 

[Steveboos]

I just got my HP-1 in the Mail today after a very long wait. I live near Charlotte, NC and the amount of channels i can pick up is astounding!! I am using a Spectrum Force antenna attached to my roof for my house and in my car i used a Schosce windshield GPS mount to mount it. I am currently trying to find a quality mobile antenna for my car with a long enough wire to get through my car.

Currently i love it, but we shall see over the next couple days how it works out mobile and in the home environment.

 

[rwier]

...................................... As I make more favorite lists I am noticing trouble with the P25 ................................................ Phoenix PD RWC. ..........................

After you get your fav list into HP-1, select a single site and avoid the others (do this in the radio). You can find your best by trial and error, but from your post I'm guessing "C" or "F".See if that smooths things out a little. I'm near I-17 & Bell, so "A" (Shaw Butte tower, I think) is the best by far for me.

 

[FoxHunter44]

HP-1 Sensitivity and range.

You'd better check your antennas or ensure that you don't have nearby signals that are desensitizing your HP-1. I find VHF-HI and UHF reception to be very good with mine.

I would agree, and if anything it has too much range, reaching far further out than any of my other handhld scanners with their rubber-ducky antennas. Have you checked all your setting on the HP-1?

-Gene-

 

[FoxHunter44]

Quick check the attenuation and squelch setting in your HP-1 first before sending it back......

-Gene-

 

[ST-Bob]

The range is not as simple as you would think. Every trunked system or individual convention system has its own range for each transmitter and/or site. When you set the range on the HP1 you're setting the size of YOUR range circle. Wherever YOUR range circle intersects a local system's range circle, you select that frequency.

Some of you are incorrectly assuming that setting the range to say 5 miles will exclude all transmitters located more than 5 miles away. This is wrong - it will exclude only those transmitters whose defined range circle ends more than 5 miles away from your location.

The end result is that if the database says a certain frequency has a 100 mile range and you have your range set to 5 miles you have to be greater than 105 miles from it for the scanner to deselect it automatically. May be a little counter-intuitive but it is pretty clearly described this way in the manual.

Here in Massachusetts we have several frequencies which are defined by Radio Reference as having 100 miles or more range circles. You've practically got to be in another state or maybe 2 states away to deselect them. It's a limitation of the way system range is defined I guess. Although terrain makes most transmitters have strangely shaped coverage areas, the algorithm used here is for each transmitter to have a circular pattern which is often specified over-optimistically as the furthers demonstrated range 2-way comms has been shown to work.

As more and better database editing software is developed we'll be able to more easily deal with this. Come to think of it, the problem could probably be easily corrected (and make it work more intuitively) by setting all database entries to 0 miles radius. Then the HP1 would accurately be able to select/deselect based solely on the range rather than the combination of both the range and unknown transmitter range... Programmers - you listening???

 

[loumaag]

...
As more and better database editing software is developed we'll be able to more easily deal with this. Come to think of it, the problem could probably be easily corrected (and make it work more intuitively) by setting all database entries to 0 miles radius. Then the HP1 would accurately be able to select/deselect based solely on the range rather than the combination of both the range and unknown transmitter range... Programmers - you listening???

True, the "radius only" method used in the DB is not optimum, but it is what we have. Also, understand the radius defined in the DB is supposed to define a circle that only includes the intended coverage area (or service area for TGs). It is not supposed to be where you can hear the transmitters (or TGs), only where you are supposed to hear them all the time. So your report of some with 100 mile radius seems to be an error in the DB. I will grant that a TRS using a set of towers in simulcast mode could cover a pretty good chunk of ground; however, a 100 mile radius (200 mile diameter) seems pretty unlikely.

As for your suggestion that we should alter the DB to reflect a 0 radius, that is not going to happen and would be false on the face of it. However, you can have the same result by changing the reception radius of your HP-1 to 0, that way you will have to actually be in the coverage area of a transmitter (or service area for a TG) as defined in the DB to hear it. (Taking into account the circle doesn't really work mentioned above.)

 

[DonS]

I do understand the HP-1 range vs. RRDB settings. However, when I select my 95051 ZIP code, I certainly don't expect to hear (or even try to hear) much from Alameda County, much less anything from Santa Cruz County or Yosemite National Park.

 

[wheelerg]

This to me is probably the most shocking thing I've read in any review of the HP.

I've found the receiver to be one of the best I've ever seen in a scanner - ever - it ranks right up there with the Pro-2006. And this is coming from an owner of an AOR-5000 and an Icom R9500.

Every listening post is different - so I'm not going to totally discount your claims - but I would certainly check to see if you have a faulty radio or antenna/connector problems.

You hit the nail on the head with this post...i really appreciate everyone chiming in with there experience with the HP, there are no right or wrong opinions really, just user experiences....i value each persons opinions of the unit......G