News photographer ditches brand new 436HP, film at 11

[JamesO]

The base of the ladder has about 1 million warning placards, as well as a notice requiring sunglasses while on the tower..........don't really understand that.

I guess they require stereo plugs because that way the mono audio can go to both left and right of stereo headphones?

Paul

Sunglasses?? that's a new one.

Yea, most headphone jacks are wired for stereo due to the iProduct generation. Uniden may have been able to spend another $0.01 per unit on a few components and a bit of brain power to made the scanners work with either stereo or mono plugs, but this is another discussion.

 

[fourthhorseman]

The base of the ladder has about 1 million warning placards, as well as a notice requiring sunglasses while on the tower..........don't really understand that.

Paul

So your not blinded by the sun,or a reflection and plummet to your demise.
Aint no shade up there baby!

 

[AA6IO]

The 436HP still lacks some of the advertised features, but with regard to P25 decoding, I think the 436HP is the best of all the portable scanners I currently have, including the 396T, 396XT, PRO-106, and Home Patrol. The same goes for my 536HP vs. 996T, 996XT, and PRO-197.
I really don't know how one can judge the merits of scanners like the new x36HPs after such brief testing.
Also, my experience with HRO in Anaheim has certainly been different that of Anderegg in San Diego.
But I do realize that if Anderegg is using the scanner for his news reporting, then he doesn't have the luxury of fiddling around with a new scanner for days, weeks, and even months, as many of us have done with the new x36HPs, as our scanning hobby, to optimize their performance.
However, once the x36HPs are optimized for each situation, I still think they are the best thing out there at the price with regard to P25 reception. Also, if any of the systems in San Diego, or anywhere else, go to phase 2, you will need these (or one of the new Whistlers [buenas suerte = good luck), so maybe keeping the new scanner, and learning to optimize it in your spare time, may not be a bad idea.
Steve AA6IO
Steve AA6IO

 

[AA6IO]

One other comment for the OP and others new to the x36HPs. Please refer to the posts regarding optimizing P25 performance back in January and February of this year on the RRDB. Adjusting from NFM to FM, attenuate vs. no attenuate, and P25 threshold mode and level settings can affect the P25 decode performance on these new scanners. This seems especially true with mixed mode Motorola trunk systems. Many users have reported different settings depending on their particular systems. There are some detailed past threads on this topic.
Steve AA6IO

 

[Anderegg]

steve, part of the enjoyment of Uniden scanners is knowing that you can tweak extra "performance" out of them through menu settings. I already brought along the NFM to FM and P25 threshold mods from my XT optimizing to the HP. The problem besides sensitivity that bothers me most is this ridiculousness of ERR rates not able to achieve 0 under any circumstances in the county of San Diego, which is a perfect ERR: 0 with no antenna for the XT series. Perhaps the optimization for problematic sites has corrupted the compatibility with simpler non troublesome sites. UPman comments on this in his NFM to FM testing post, about not wanting to break the other half of the customer base.

The P25 level thing is not being explained in any proper way, in the past, or now. Pretty much all you hear is 8 is stock, some systems work better at 11. Well, why is there a 0-20 scale? Why don't they just call 8 A and 11 B, or 8 - and 11 +? My 436HP likes 12-13, and I had to test it's ERR rate for several minutes on each number to get to those. The cops here are very annoying, they don't talk long enough for the ERR rate to calculate, and then the stupid fire trucks on analog keep tying up the decode testing! :-D

Paul

 

[Go-West]

So far for the most part I am pleased with my 436. Sure there are things I do not like about, like the time frame in turning it on and waiting for it to be ready and monitoring. I wish I was able to shut off the national directory of the database and focus on my area, Dona Ana County, NM and El Paso City/County, Texas. The reception for my from the El Paso P-25 system is better than my other scanners.
I did buy other software for it via Butel since I have used their software for years now my BCD 396T and GRE 500. I like the software with the 436 and ease of moving files from the 396 instead of having to start from scratch. I'd say its like everything in life there are both good and bad.

 

[Anderegg]

A quick video of me hooking up a test lead to a fairly substantial external antenna.....results to follow.

Uniden BCD436HP ultimate external antenna - YouTube

 

[Anderegg]

I wish I was able to shut off the national directory of the database and focus on my area, Dona Ana County, NM and El Paso City/County, Texas.

That annoyed me for a short time as well. You have to think of the built in directory as a sort of "off-line RR database". It's not really meant to be scanned. You can dig into it and pull up anything anytime anywhere, but it seems it's main purpose is to reside turned "off" and be used to copy, paste, transfer, whatever wording you'd like, into new FAVORITES LISTS. Once you pick and choose little bits of this SD card stored RR database to your FAV lists, then you can go to the select scan thing, turn national database OFF, and just turn on your FAV's and add QK's to them like the old banks in the XT's.

Once you have a scanable FAV, and turn off the other junk, when you power up, it loads ONLY that selected "on" FAV's, and it only takes a second or two unless your loading up an entire state or something.

Again, I repeat, the built in national database is merely an "off-line" Radio Reference database website for most intents and purposes.

Paul

 

[jonwienke]

That's pretty much how I use it as well. You can change settings like AGC on/off in a favorite list that are not doable in the main database (at least in Sentinel).

 

[KevinC]

A quick video of me hooking up a test lead to a fairly substantial external antenna.....results to follow.

Uniden BCD436HP ultimate external antenna - YouTube

I don't think that ground wire will be a very good antenna...but I could be wrong.

 

[03msc]

I don't think that ground wire will be a very good antenna...but I could be wrong.

LOL turning into quite a joke...or so it seems.

 

[Anderegg]

The official "ditching" of the 436HP has not taken place yet. I like keeping things I buy, and I have been trying to see if this stupid thing can be of any use. I took the 436HP with RS800 antenna into my station along with my old 396XT with the tiny 1/4 wave spike. Set them both to scan the analog PD channels. The 396XT picked up about 90% of the traffic. The 436HP picked up about 25%. This was just walking around inside holding both side by side together. The 436HP just has absolutely horrible sensitivity. When it did receive, the background static was so loud and distracting, it was very difficult to hear anything, where the 396XT gave a slight fading hiss.

So, as an "on the belt" scanner it is useless since I have the 396XT. So I hooked it onto the laptop screen in my car, and tried some distant digital traffic. Stuff my 996XT's with roof-top antenna were having trouble with. Amazingly, the P25 decode performance on the 436HP is far superior to the 996XT's, even with the 436HP running the RS800. The local close in area P25 stuff was rattling and a bit broken in the ERR 30 range on the 996's, evidence that the cell tower looming 1000 feet away was blasting me, but the 436HP refused to garble or break up in P25 mode.

Strangely enough, the HP decode ERR rate doesn't seem to relate to the XT's in any way. ERR of 30 on the HP sounds normal, but is a bit broken on the XT. So for the time being, I am going to see if I can prop this up to scan a single bank at a time of P25 traffic, because it is utterly useless for analog, due to the total lack of sensitivity. Not scientific, but if one radio receives all over the room, and the other doesn't, that's definitive enough for me.

Paul

 

[JamesO]

Details please. What frequency is the analog PD frequency the 436HP was having issues with?

 

[Anderegg]

Trunked system in San Diego........and there is no setting or ATT responsible for this. It can;t be explained away, the damn thing simply cannot suck in the signal, it's semi-deaf. Squelch on the HP was set to 0 for this, and the XT was set to 2.

Paul

 

[JamesO]

Still need details. What frequencies?

This info may help unravel some mysteries where people complain theses radios frequency performance can suffer with different firmware and/or there may be a dead zone in some or all of these radios.

My 436HP looses a lot of VHF sensitivity when headphones or a battery powered external speaker cable is plugged in. I would have expected the headphones or speaker cable to act as a counterpoise and help, but it washed out any weak signals.

 

[Anderegg]

San Diego City 800mhz TRS.

Paul

 

[JamesO]

800 MHz Analog trunked system?

So this sounds more like a trunking decoding problem than an RF sensitivity issue?? What kind of RSSI did you appear to have and did you try both Narrow vs Normal FM?

 

[Anderegg]

When I got the scanner, it was set to scan in NFM, and that is when i first noticed the analog issue. Switch ed it to Fm as I do all my scanners, because Fm is what 800 is, and UPman said to do so.

Definitely a sensitivity issue, as when it does pop up a voice channel, it fades and cuts completely to static before vanishing while the 396XT powers on. Just did a test under the cell phone tower I practically work under, and I didn't notice any special RF selectivity that would make up for the lack of sensitivity......the 396XT still pulled in analog and P25 better than the HP. By pulled in I mean stopped on the channel and at least voice came through, the 436 still decodes better when it does get a channel stop and lock, but mainly scans on with full bars not hitting on what the 396 is stopping on.

Paul

 

[jonwienke]

Receiver sensitivity in a given band is not going to change between analog/digital in the same band. If digital decoding is not working well, it's something in the settings for that system.

Also, your scanner comparison is meaningless/invalid unless you're feeding both scanners off the same antenna through a T and equal pieces of coax.

 

[teufler]

he could switch the antennas, if still poor reception, his comparison holds water.