Howard County APCO25 switchover - choppy audio

[lebrunmn]

Updating: I tried both a "stub" antenna, sometimes in conjunction with an inline 3dB attenuator, and unfortunately neither made a significant difference. Quality is still most of the time unreadable.

sslop-

Those stubby antennas are still omni-directional... before you give up on your 296, you might try using a more directional antenna like this one. Just point the antenna toward a single tower--easier said, I know--to try to isolate one, good signal instead of the several towers that you're currently receiving. This is the antenna I used in my attic to isolate a Balto Co. tower, when I was having difficulties getting decent reception. It took a bit of trial and error, but eventually I was able to copy Balto Co. very well.

Good luck!

 

[riveter]

I think yesterday I was hearing 11016 that had MSP activity on it. I have no idea is what the full time TG is, or if it was a patch, or what.. But the Waterloo cars were checking the park and rides for some reason.

Hey I mean, MSP can check whatever it likes, they're not exactly limited on jurisdiction lol... they just never get off the roads around here because they're stuck with like 2 troopers on duty for a whole county.

 

[markgrutz]

So I know that lebrunmn posted his use of a yagi above, but in case anyone is into the DIY stuff...

I downloaded VK5DJ's yagi calculator software this morning, found some scrap 1" PVC pipe that was about 15" long and whipped up this guy this morning. I had a roll of steel wire that was 3.6mm, which was a bit hard to cut, but I only had a bit of copper tube and didn't want to go out in the public. The wire is RG8x that I got for another project, but decided to use it for this for now. From start to finish it took me about an hour, and most of that time was looking for cutters that would handle that steel wire. I had a solder on BNC connector on one end, and the other is attached to the folded dipole on the antenna. The mount is temporary, at some point I will put this outside.

Now the big deal, the closest tower is 3 miles West(ish) of here. I have a PSR-800 and have tried the stock antenna, 800mhz antenna, and just a paperclip and no setting seemed to make much difference. Now, this guy is on it with 50 feet of cable, the reception went from about 15% to 100% in a heartbeat.

The cable was like $19 for the 50' roll of RG8x. I had the connector, but I think they are like $5 each. The pipe was free, but maybe $3 for a precut piece from HD. Not sure about the wire since I had that. But whole project done for less than $30, even less if you have scrap cable and whatnot. I don't have to care about SWR on this since its not going to transmit, but it was a fun little morning project with a great outcome. I attached the pdf printout of the VK5DJ results for this exact one.

 

[engine32]

What is the proper setting to use for Howard county using free scan their are 3 settings which one do i use
Thanks
REvans

 

[tvengr]

P25 Standard (Digital XT). That is for a XT or P2 scanner. What model scanner do you have?

 

[engine32]

I have BCD 996XT

 

[maus92]

Acceptable reception will be hit or miss for you, based on your physical location.

 

[tvengr]

Give this file a try. Save the attached zipped file to your computer and extract. Open the extracted file with FreeSCAN and Upload Programming. System quick key is 8.

 

[engine32]

Ok i will give a try thanks

 

[tvengr]

Ok i will give a try thanks

Did you have any luck with the file?

 

[engine32]

Sorry for late responses yes i did have very good luck with those
Thanks