I might get a lot of grief for this post, but it is what it is (SDS 100 -vs- cheapo RTL-SDR)

[Ubbe]

You have a faint signal from 773.81875 that doesn't look to be very strong. You see that the frequency box to the right alternate between the four frequencies including 773.81875 at a 0.4 sec rate?

If the program show that it checks the 773.81875 frequency then try and move the antenna, if possible, to get a stronger signal and then that "idle" text will change to "Control".

/Ubbe

 

[fasteddy64]

I am making progress!! You guys have been a great help.

 

[fasteddy64]

It is still missing a lot of calls the 536 hears but at least it is working

 

[Ubbe]

A SDR dongle are not as sensitive as a BCD536 and perhaps they also use different antennas. If a voice frequency are too weak it will jump straight back to the control channel without monitoring that call.

I don't have any p25 system so can't assist any further in the configuration but I hope Bob and others can do that. If you learn how to add TG labels and make selections to only monitor certain TG's then you have manage to jump over one big hurdle. I believe that EDACS require more of manual setup for each voice frequency and link them to channel numbers. But if you play around with that P25 system for a while it will probably be a lot easier to grasp how a EDACS monitoring program needs to be installed.

/Ubbe

 

[bob550]

Are you using the same antenna connected to both the 536 and the dongle? Click on the "Tuner" tab and see if you increase your SDR gain.

 

[smatrixt]

You can't beat an SDR for MilAir scanning. I scan the whole band in about 1.5 seconds and have a spreadsheet of 100's of frequencies that gets added to almost every day.

 

[fasteddy64]

You can't beat an SDR for MilAir scanning. I scan the whole band in about 1.5 seconds and have a spreadsheet of 100's of frequencies that gets added to almost every day.

How do you get it to scan so fast? Mine takes 18 seconds to scan from 225 to 380 mhz.

 

[smatrixt]

How do you get it to scan so fast? Mine takes 18 seconds to scan from 225 to 380 mhz.

AirSpy is really quick, the rtl-sdr dongle I can only get down to like 8 seconds.

 

[fasteddy64]

AirSpy is really quick, the rtl-sdr dongle I can only get down to like 8 seconds.

ah ok. Thanks

 

[WSAK600]

I love my SDR's. There are so many things you can do with them that you just simply can't do with a scanner. I also like DSD+ Fastlane and all of it's decoding capabilities. I still bought a scanner though.

My reason was for being able to monitor my police, fire, and EMS without having to drag out my laptop and taking time to hook up the SDR's and setting up my antenna every time. (I don't leave mine running 24/7). It comes in real handy just to be able to turn on your scanner and listen what is going on when you hear sirens flying by your house instead of setting up all of my equipment and booting windows.

By then I have missed what was going on. Not to mention that despite DSD+ being able to decode all of those digital signals, the quality of the digital audio seems to be much better on my Uniden.

DSD+ is getting there though. It gets better with every update. But to my ears, it's still not quite there.