Home Patrol and Cincinnati/Hamilton County P25 System

[beischel]

I have had nothing but issues using Uniden scanners with the Cincinnati/Hamilton County P25 system. Years ago I purchased a 996 and went through all the Uniden experimentation with firmware upgrades, constant adjustment to settings trying to get it to decode the P25 transmissions properly. I finally gave up and gave the scanner to my nephew whose dad is a Cincinnati firefighter.

I then went and bought a couple of the GRE PSR-600 scanners (one GRE brand the other Radio Shack) and they honestly do a fantastic job on decodes. Hardly ever get broken audio and audio quality is very good and clear.

So when the Home Patrol came out, I decided to pick one up at the Dayton Hamvention in 2012. Right away the unit had issues decoding the Cincinnati/Hamilton County P25 system. Broken audio at times and would stop on "channels" and no audio. It does work fine on other systems in the area both P25 and conventional trunking.

I recently did the upgrade to the latest firmware from Uniden. Then it did not pick up anything! It would scan side by side with the GRE scanners and while the GRE's were working great, nothing from the Home Patrol. So I went and reverted back to the earlier version of the firmware (2.03/2.3??) and it restored it doing the P25 decoding of the Cincinnati/Hamilton County system again, not great, but at least it mostly is decoding again. I thought firmware upgrades were supposed to help, not make things worse.

Frankly, I am at a loss for why Uniden scanners seem to have so much trouble with the Cincinnati/Hamilton County system. Sure would like to see Uniden get this corrected.

Anyone else experiencing issues with Uniden - especially the Home Patrol, and the Cincinnati/Hamilton County system?

 

[W8RMH]

I go to the Cincinnati area occasionally and my BCD396XT receives that system just fine, depending on location. Cincinnati is not the flattest city around, and no scanner can account for that. A good 700/800 MHz. antenna definitely helps.

 

[beischel]

Well that really does not address the issue. The GRE scanners side-by-side with the Unidens run rings around the Uniden scanners. So location is not the issue in this case.

I would agree that if both scanners had the issue then location certainly would be a consideration.

Location also does not address how the 2.04 firmware update rendered the scanner useless forcing me to go back to the previous version so it would pick up and decode anything.

It's not a location issue, it's an issue with the Uniden scanners, in this case the Home Patrol.

 

[kc8gjh]

I got rid of my HP for that same reason. I'm on the west side of the county and it was horrible on the Hamilton County system. My PRS-800 works like a champ on that system compared to the HP.