HomePatrol Reception Problems

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kingfishracin

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I just got my HomePatrol and have my local city PD and Sheriffs dept saved as favorites. I am not in a big city and I am pretty close to both departments. The problem that I am having is the officers breaking up when talking. An officer can be clear as a bell one minute and then breaking up the next. I paid alot of money for this thing just to hear every other word half the time. Does anyone else have this problem? Are their some settings that I need to change? I do have the Attenuation turned off.
Thanks for any help.
 

davefirelt

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Massachusetts
I just got my HomePatrol and have my local city PD and Sheriffs dept saved as favorites. I am not in a big city and I am pretty close to both departments. The problem that I am having is the officers breaking up when talking. An officer can be clear as a bell one minute and then breaking up the next. I paid alot of money for this thing just to hear every other word half the time. Does anyone else have this problem? Are their some settings that I need to change? I do have the Attenuation turned off.
Thanks for any help.

What type systems do these departments use, Trunked or repeater or simplex etc. Of course if simplex you will only hear mobile units in your fairly local area?
 

kf7yn

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Could also be the piece o' crap antenna that comes stock with the HomePatrol, try a better antenna. I did and notice a considerable improvement.
 

phask

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KZZV - SE Ohio
I just got my HomePatrol and have my local city PD and Sheriffs dept saved as favorites. I am not in a big city and I am pretty close to both departments. The problem that I am having is the officers breaking up when talking. An officer can be clear as a bell one minute and then breaking up the next. I paid alot of money for this thing just to hear every other word half the time. Does anyone else have this problem? Are their some settings that I need to change? I do have the Attenuation turned off.
Thanks for any help.


Being close to the depts. may or may not mean a thing. If it's a repeater system you need to be able to hear the repeater output. You might have the repeater input programmed. If it's a digital - same thing. The dept. may or may not have a transmitter nearby. Do you have aluminum siding or metallic faced house wrap

Can you hear the base and not the mobiles? Need a LOT more info. to guess what is going on.
 
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Being close to the depts. may or may not mean a thing. If it's a repeater system you need to be able to hear the repeater output. You might have the repeater input programmed. If it's a digital - same thing. The dept. may or may not have a transmitter nearby. Do you have aluminum siding or metallic faced house wrap

Can you hear the base and not the mobiles? Need a LOT more info. to guess what is going on.


Try taking the unit outside and see if the reception improves. If it does then you will probably need to get an external antenna. My house is made totally of metal, the walls and roof. If I use the dinky little antenna that comes with the unit I can't receive anything. So I have an external antenna mounted on a 20 foot pole and pull in stations as far away as 40 miles with little break up.
 

kingfishracin

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They are using the VIPER system. The breaking up does not happen everytime, it is intermittent. I first thought that is was just the dispatch radio of my local PD that was doing it, but it is happening to both departments and the officers radios. I thought it could be my wireless router so I unpluged it, no change. I can try it outside but my house is all wood with cedar siding
 

phask

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They are using the VIPER system. The breaking up does not happen everytime, it is intermittent. I first thought that is was just the dispatch radio of my local PD that was doing it, but it is happening to both departments and the officers radios. I thought it could be my wireless router so I unpluged it, no change. I can try it outside but my house is all wood with cedar siding

How far are you from the transmitter? Can you verify that the HP is receiving the correct / closest one? Hold on the system - select advanced and it will display the site it is receiving. You had said you created a favorite some it should just be the one you entered in the favorite. However, depending on how you created it , you may have several sites selected.


Voice Interoperability Plan for Emergency Responders (VIPER) Trunking System, Various, North Carolina - Scanner Frequencies

I'm in Ohio - similar system and I have no problem with the xmitter about 8 miles away - even with NO antenna.
 

kingfishracin

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Everytime i hold and go to advanced it is coming from a different site. None of which are even in my county. It looks like its trying to use sites that are in orange (not in range). Should I go through and avoid all sites marked in orange?
 
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phask

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Everytime i hold and go to advanced it is coming from a different site. None of which are even in my county. It looks like its trying to use sites that are in orange (not in range). Should I go through and avoid all sites marked in orange?

Yes - are edit your favorite, delete all the sites you do not need, and upload the favorite. Easier than avoiding them all.

When I create a Fav. for Ohio it loads every site in the entire state. I then must spend svereal minutes deleting all but the local one(s). I feel it's an error in the way Sentinel works, but that's the way it is.

If you just use it at home, I'd delete ALL but one or two that are the closest.
 

OCO

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Have you read the Uniden blog about location? The HP1l only scans those sites that are in range. If the range on the Viper sites is 25-35 miles ( I did a quick look) and you are setting your range above zero, it'll try scanning all the sites that are within range OR overlap the range you have set. Note that I also edit most of the sites out of the statewide system favorite that I scan, but more because it seems to take longer to get through the scan cycle. Even if I don't I only get traffic from the three tower sites that are within the coverage range as shown in the DB.

I do wish that you could see every element of a record in Sentinel without having to create a Favorite and drill down that way. As it is, you either create a Favorite or refer to the RR database to even see what the Range is for a site or Talkgroup..
 

kingfishracin

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I had my range set at thirty miles but i just went in and avoided all but the systems in my county. I still seem to be having the problem. They start out talking and you hear them great then after the first couple of words it will start breaking up.
 
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kingfishracin

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Not sure. Never had the weather come on. when I go into the weather mode it has two boxes. One says Monitor NOAA Weather and the othe says Weather Alert Standby. The breaking up problem that I am having does sound like somebody is stepping on the person talking.
 

OCO

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Sounds like weather alert, priority or close call. Make sure they're all off.

None of those exist on a HomePatrol in normal scan mode ......
Weather alert functions only in standby mode.
There is neither a priority or close call function at all.
 

kingfishracin

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It's just frustrating when your listening to officers on scene and one minute they sound like they are right next to you and the next time they talk you hear two or three words. I wouldnt be as upset if that was happening and I was trying to pick someone up thirty miles away. I havent contacted Uniden yet I figured I would start with the people that are using them everyday.
 

phask

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Have you read the Uniden blog about location? The HP1l only scans those sites that are in range. If the range on the Viper sites is 25-35 miles ( I did a quick look) and you are setting your range above zero, it'll try scanning all the sites that are within range OR overlap the range you have set. Note that I also edit most of the sites out of the statewide system favorite that I scan, but more because it seems to take longer to get through the scan cycle. Even if I don't I only get traffic from the three tower sites that are within the coverage range as shown in the DB.

I do wish that you could see every element of a record in Sentinel without having to create a Favorite and drill down that way. As it is, you either create a Favorite or refer to the RR database to even see what the Range is for a site or Talkgroup..

NOT if you have a favorite with location control OFF.

IMHO - it's better when you can receive muliple sites if you only have one selected. This only works if that site gets everything you want and users are associated with that site. Also, if the one site goes down - nada.
 

OCO

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I had my range set at thirty miles but i just went in and avoided all but the systems in my county. I still seem to be having the problem. They start out talking and you hear them great then after the first couple of words it will start breaking up.

When you say "systems" do you mean Viper sites or different state and local systems? I believe you mean that you have avoided all the Viper sites not in your immediate vicinity, which leaves what - 3 or 4?. If you have the Extreme version, use the Trunked System Analyzer and check System Load/Reception Status on each site. If you don't have the Extreme update, avoid all but one of the local Viper sites at a time and see if you get clear reception all of the time from one of them. This could at least tell you if the issue is hitting different sites which may be of lower signal quality..Then, it might just be a different antenna..

Do you get any other systems OK?
 
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