Need portable antenna SDS100 scanner

[GregOH]

Oh yes the paperclip LOL... You also had the paint can, you drill a hole in the paint can and stick the rubber duck in the hole. What you're referring to is P2 capable scanners like the x36s. Those radios had big problems with simulcast distortion secondary to LSM. You were in between many towers simultaneously transmitting what your scanner was calling for so the least efficient antenna worked the best in an attempt to isolate just one Tower.

This is not an issue with the SDS radios as they have an SDR chip and are simulcast capable. The biggest challenge to P2 capable radios other than the SDS series is tdma Phase 2 Transmissions.

So the big question is what radio do you use and what are you listening to?

I use the sds100 and listen to talkgroups. Even though the scanner is made to handle simulcast, I'm not so sure it does as well as advertised. I still get garbled transmissions and sometimes it won't be stopping on anything and all the sudden I'll hear a dispatcher say "you're clear" and I'm like whoa wait, what did she hear that I didn't?

Imo when dealing with simulcast, antenna specs go out the window.

 

[trentbob]

I use the sds100 and listen to talkgroups. Even though the scanner is made to handle simulcast, I'm not so sure it does as well as advertised. I still get garbled transmissions and sometimes it won't be stopping on anything and all the sudden I'll hear a dispatcher say "you're clear" and I'm like whoa wait, what did she hear that I didn't?

Imo when dealing with simulcast, antenna specs go out the window.

Ah... well we won't go off topic here on this antenna thread but when the SDS first came out and I had one in June of 2018 I had the same problems with my simulcast system. Radio just didn't work good. Missed and clipped Transmissions. Paul was still alive and on the case. We had frequent firmware updates to improve performance and the radio was a work in progress. All I can say is when the firmware update came out with the first set of filters, I tried them and it was a freaking miracle.

Not going to go into it here but I recommend you go to Uniden Tech forum, go back a few months and read the thread SDS filter settings... I have a few Post in there... it will make all the difference in the world.

 

[GregOH]

Ah... well we won't go off topic here on this antenna thread but when the SDS first came out and I had one in June of 2018 I had the same problems with my simulcast system. Radio just didn't work good. Missed and clipped Transmissions. Paul was still alive and on the case. We had frequent firmware updates to improve performance and the radio was a work in progress. All I can say is when the firmware update came out with the first set of filters, I tried them and it was a freaking miracle.

Not going to go into it here but I recommend you go to Uniden Tech forum, go back a few months and read the thread SDS filter settings... I have a few Post in there... it will make all the difference in the world.

I did some reading on filter settings as you recommended and I spent some time with them to see what works best for me. I have it set to wide invert for the state system now and that does seem better and I may have to rethink my antenna purchase and go with the Remtronix antenna like I initially planned on doing.

What the problem seems to be (with many agencies) is for some reason randomly, the first transmission will be flat out missed and after that everything's fine. I have watched the display and will see the first transmission from an agency pop up for a few seconds and hear absolutely nothing and after that it'll start scanning again and then it'll stop with the rest of the transmissions from all parties involved. Sometimes I'll get everything from an agency and all that are involved, and other times the first transmission from that same agency will be missed. *weird*.

 

[trentbob]

Yep but not weird enough for something called system hold time. Right on your radio Press menu... manage favorites... select the favorites list... pick your list... review/ edit system... pick the system... select system... edit system option... set hold time... It should read zero So press 2 then press enter. Use menu button to back out of menu and start scanning. You are doing it on the radio itself for real-time results. Listen for a while... Problem solved? LOL. If it does work you can always repeat the process and try 1 second instead of 2, if that works just as well you are good to go. If you have to stay with 2 and it slows scanning down a little bit then that's the price to pay. Once you settle on one second or two seconds and it works, hook up to Sentinel and transfer scanner information to your profile and it'll be permanently saved. Should solve your problem.

 

[GregOH]

Yep but not weird enough for something called system hold time. Right on your radio Press menu... manage favorites... select the favorites list... pick your list... review/ edit system... pick the system... select system... edit system option... set hold time... It should read zero So press 2 then press enter. Use menu button to back out of menu and start scanning. You are doing it on the radio itself for real-time results. Listen for a while... Problem solved? LOL. If it does work you can always repeat the process and try 1 second instead of 2, if that works just as well you are good to go. If you have to stay with 2 and it slows scanning down a little bit then that's the price to pay. Once you settle on one second or two seconds and it works, hook up to Sentinel and transfer scanner information to your profile and it'll be permanently saved. Should solve your problem.

Sorry for going off topic, but I feel I need to reply here.

I tried using 1 with system hold time and that still didn't solve the issue but it's better with the setting at 2 (thanks @trentbob) however that wasn't the only thing I needed to do and I'm still trying to improve on it with settings. The following is what I've also done that also seems to have helped (my situation).

1) I have 2 antenna's and I'm using the one that gives me more signal strength.

2) I went back into Settings and set the Global Auto Filter for the System to Wide Invert.

3) With the scanner scanning up alphabetical order, I noticed that with the Stark County site it would get signal bars and Data flash up on the display and the scanner momentarily stopping on that site and when it moved on Tuscarawas was next doing the same thing with Coshocton County being next when starting to scan up the list again. I'm interested in hearing everything from Coshocton and Tuscarawas but only interested in Stark if I travel and take the scanner with me which doesn't happen very often, so I went into Sites and put Stark on temporary avoid. Another thing I noticed is Coshocton has 5 sites and Tuscarawas has 3 and every time the scanner stops on anything I am interested in whether it be OSP, Tusc, or Coshocton, the site shown is Tuscarawas County (probably because the 7 Mile Drive site is closest and only a few miles from me).

I'm wondering if I put the sites other than Tusc County on avoid if that will improve it even more with less sites being monitored or if I'll loose alot of OSP because they are on consolidated dispatch and all sites in Coshocton would need to be turned on so I won't miss anything being transmitted in the district. I'm not sure how transmissions via towers work with a simulcast system, a neighboring county that is not simulcast and an OSP department that is consolidated dispatch.

 

[trentbob]

Applying a two second system hold time is going to affect the entire system you chose. Unfortunately Greg I'm not familiar with your system at all, I'll be going out this afternoon but I will take a look at the system at some point. Tell me exactly what system it is again...

Without knowing a thing about your system whatsoever I can tell you you are listening to way way too many sites LOL. How long does it take you to circle back to where you started? I can imagine you may not hear full conversations if they take more than 2 seconds to reply. Again not knowing a thing about your system or what it's even called, I know on my simulcast or hybrid large-scale multiple site systems I normally only listen to one, possibly two sites at a time.

After noon or so I won't be back until later tonight. Give me your home town and County and the name of the system you're having problems with and I will surely take a look.

 

[GregOH]

Applying a two second system hold time is going to affect the entire system you chose. Unfortunately Greg I'm not familiar with your system at all, I'll be going out this afternoon but I will take a look at the system at some point. Tell me exactly what system it is again...

Without knowing a thing about your system whatsoever I can tell you you are listening to way way too many sites LOL. How long does it take you to circle back to where you started? I can imagine you may not hear full conversations if they take more than 2 seconds to reply. Again not knowing a thing about your system or what it's even called, I know on my simulcast or hybrid large-scale multiple site systems I normally only listen to one, possibly two sites at a time.

After noon or so I won't be back until later tonight. Give me your home town and County and the name of the system you're having problems with and I will surely take a look.

I've gone back into sites and set Tusc Co filter to Wide Auto and will see how that does.
System is Ohio MARCS-IP and I monitor OSP dist 7, Coshocton Co, and Tuscarawas Co more than anything and ODOT districts 3, 4, 5, and 11 when the plows are out and about.

Thanks

 

[jonwienke]

Before using a system hold time greater than zero, keep this in mind:
If you're holding in a talkgroup, if there is more than one site in scan range, the scanner will continue to scan all sites within range, even while holding on the talkgroup. But it will pause site scanning during a call until the channel Delay setting has expired with no traffic.

It takes 1-2 seconds to parse the control channel data from a site, so if a call comes in during a site swap, you will miss the first second or so of the first transmission. And you will miss that regardless of the system hold time. The correct solution is to do a site hold; that pauses the site scanning while a system hold time >0 will not.

 

[GregOH]

The correct solution is to do a site hold; that pauses the site scanning while a system hold time >0 will not.

Jon, do you mean Channel Hold and that would be the only solution to the issue? I've only seen the same site every time it stops with what I'm monitoring, so would that suggest that simulcast has something to do with it or am I not understanding how sites in a cell work?

 

[jonwienke]

No, channel hold is not the same as site hold. If multiple sites are active, the active sites will still be scanned when channel hold is on. You have to do a separate site hold (function, then department key) to hold on a single site.

That doesn't apply if the system only has one site though. And the scanner periodically does a housekeeping thing where it drops the control channel momentarily to clear internal data. The first second or so of a call that starts during a housekeeping cycle will be missed because it takes that long to parse control channel data. The system hold time affects the housekeeping interval, but doesn't make it go away completely, so there will always be some percentage of calls where the first second or so of the first transmission is missed.

 

[GregOH]

Site Hold seems to be working well, I'll stick with it for a bit.
Thanks.

 

[trentbob]

No, channel hold is not the same as site hold. If multiple sites are active, the active sites will still be scanned when channel hold is on. You have to do a separate site hold (function, then department key) to hold on a single site.

That doesn't apply if the system only has one site though. And the scanner periodically does a housekeeping thing where it drops the control channel momentarily to clear internal data. The first second or so of a call that starts during a housekeeping cycle will be missed because it takes that long to parse control channel data. The system hold time affects the housekeeping interval, but doesn't make it go away completely, so there will always be some percentage of calls where the first second or so of the first transmission is missed.

Jon, a question but first I agree about site hold over system hold time in this case, when the radio first came out and before filters were introduced I had an awful time with my simulcast system which has one site called simulcast which can be manipulated in the radio and then has 26 Towers. On Paul's suggestion I used a system hold time of 255 seconds which kept the housekeeping function from happening a little over every 4 minutes.

Here's my question. I vaguely remember Paul putting out a firmware update that eliminated the housekeeping function as long as you did not monitor more than one system on a favorites list. It's a vague memory. Do you remember that? Maybe I should look in the firmware update notes and look for that. He had mentioned in a post that it would eliminate people like me from having to use a 255 second system hold time. Obviously I was unable to scan anything else but that one system. Also using site hold on just one site didn't help.

 

[trentbob]

Ah, here it is... I was close oh, it was a vague memory. Being that my system only has one site this update made all the difference in the performance of my system. Right before this update he came out with the first set of filters and invert made all the difference in the world also. On the second update with the second group of filters wide invert worked even better.

 

[jonwienke]

Holding on the Winchester City system (one site simulcast) the signal bars disappear and the RSSI blinks "---" every second or so. So it's still doing some sort of housekeeping something, but running it head to had against a Unication G5, I'm not hearing anything getting cut off on the SDS100.

So I think the housekeeping whatever is too brief to be an issue, and the main problem is site switching.

 

[Computrguy]

Yes, but I won't be able to do it until the 1st.

jonwienke, just wondering if you are still able to do this?

 

[jonwienke]

Need to find it. Haven't used it in a long time...

 

[GregOH]

No, channel hold is not the same as site hold. If multiple sites are active, the active sites will still be scanned when channel hold is on. You have to do a separate site hold (function, then department key) to hold on a single site.

That doesn't apply if the system only has one site though. And the scanner periodically does a housekeeping thing where it drops the control channel momentarily to clear internal data. The first second or so of a call that starts during a housekeeping cycle will be missed because it takes that long to parse control channel data. The system hold time affects the housekeeping interval, but doesn't make it go away completely, so there will always be some percentage of calls where the first second or so of the first transmission is missed.

What's nice about Site Hold is, I can set it to ID Search and get unknown tg's as well as what's programmed.

For example, I'm getting unknown 25019 on the site and I searched RR DB and it doesn't come up on the DB.

 

[GregOH]

Looking at this antenna now. It's the same price as the Remtronix at Scanner Master without the outrageous shipping fee.

Amazon.com: AEcreative Wide-Band Scanner Antenna for Uniden SDS100 BCD436HP BCD396XT BC346XT BC75XLT BC125AT BR330T Whistler TRX-1 WS1040 WS1080 RadioShack Pro Icom IC-R30 IC-RX7 AOR Alinco DJ-X11 DJ-X7T BNC SMA: Home Audio & Theater

Amazon.com: AEcreative Wide-Band Scanner Antenna for Uniden SDS100 BCD436HP BCD396XT BC346XT BC75XLT BC125AT BR330T Whistler TRX-1 WS1040 WS1080 RadioShack Pro Icom IC-R30 IC-RX7 AOR Alinco DJ-X11 DJ-X7T BNC SMA: Home Audio & Theater

www.amazon.com

 

[trentbob]

Hey Greg oh, I had this antenna for a while a few years ago just for shts and giggles, against my better judgement. If portability and compactness is what you're looking for, this thing flops all over the place and it's hard to use in a portable application. It's BNC so you will need to use the proprietary adapter that comes with the 100 or buy Jon's option.

As with any wideband antenna it has a wide coverage area but doesn't seem to be peaked on any particular band but it did do decently on Marine, rail VHF High frequencies. 7 - 800 megahertz was nothing to write home about. I imagine in your area if you use a lot of VHF low and high and have a lot of UHF stuff that you have to listen to In addition to your simulcast system it will perform better than your stock antenna.

One thing I noticed was the physical quality was not there and that seems to be a theme in the reviews with their other products also. So if you have a need for VHF high and low and UHF in addition to your simulcast system and your simulcast system comes in well and doesn't need Improvement it might be worth saving the couple of dollars you don't want to spend on Scanner Master for the remtronix for shipping to get the most optimal antenna for any simulcast 7 - 800 megahertz system. You absolutely cannot find a better antenna and even though it's not optimized for or tuned for UHF I still find it is effective enough on UHF to be better than the stock antenna on UHF. The remtronix does stink on VHF high and low.

The AEcreative long could be a very good secondary antenna for you once you do get the SMA100 version of the remtronix which is an absolute must for your simulcast system. If you are using the stock antenna for your simulcast system you will be blown away by the difference you will find with the remtronix and it will be worth the few dollars extra you have to spend on shipping to get it.

If optimal reception, quality and portability is not your goal then go ahead and get the AEcreative antenna and save yourself the few dollars on shipping by not getting the remtronix.

By the way, I ended up giving the AEcreative long antenna away as part of sweetening up a trade with someone LOL.

Decisions decisions, in reality it's not a hard decision at all.

 

[GregOH]

Hey Greg oh, I had this antenna for a while a few years ago just for shts and giggles, against my better judgement. If portability and compactness is what you're looking for, this thing flops all over the place and it's hard to use in a portable application. It's BNC so you will need to use the proprietary adapter that comes with the 100 or buy Jon's option.

As with any wideband antenna it has a wide coverage area but doesn't seem to be peaked on any particular band but it did do decently on Marine, rail VHF High frequencies. 7 - 800 megahertz was nothing to write home about. I imagine in your area if you use a lot of VHF low and high and have a lot of UHF stuff that you have to listen to In addition to your simulcast system it will perform better than your stock antenna.

One thing I noticed was the physical quality was not there and that seems to be a theme in the reviews with their other products also. So if you have a need for VHF high and low and UHF in addition to your simulcast system and your simulcast system comes in well and doesn't need Improvement it might be worth saving the couple of dollars you don't want to spend on Scanner Master for the remtronix for shipping to get the most optimal antenna for any simulcast 7 - 800 megahertz system. You absolutely cannot find a better antenna and even though it's not optimized for or tuned for UHF I still find it is effective enough on UHF to be better than the stock antenna on UHF. The remtronix does stink on VHF high and low.

The AEcreative long could be a very good secondary antenna for you once you do get the SMA100 version of the remtronix which is an absolute must for your simulcast system. If you are using the stock antenna for your simulcast system you will be blown away by the difference you will find with the remtronix and it will be worth the few dollars extra you have to spend on shipping to get it.

If optimal reception, quality and portability is not your goal then go ahead and get the AEcreative antenna and save yourself the few dollars on shipping by not getting the remtronix.

By the way, I ended up giving the AEcreative long antenna away as part of sweetening up a trade with someone LOL.

Decisions decisions, in reality it's not a hard decision at all.

The bnc version of the Remtronix antenna can be purchased at Ebay. To be honest, with being locked onto one site and getting great reception, I really don't think I need the Remtronix nor the AEcreative. Unsure what I'll do at this point Bob.