PAR FM Broadcast Filter with PSR-600

[matt1234]

I was getting fuzzy audio in the background on most 2m ham and 155 mHz police transmissions from a 50,000 watt fm broadcaster around 10 miles away. I bought a PAR fm filter from Grove, and the difference in receive sensitivity has been amazing. The distorted audio has disappeared, and signal levels from 110 mhz to 174 have increased by at least 2 signal bars (PSR600 was de-sensed). The receive range has at least doubled (from 35-40 miles to 75 to 80), and the aircraft band is packed with signals instead of birdies and distortion.

There is improvement in bands far away from the fm band - even VHF low band and Mil Air have fewer birdies.

I am not affiliated in any way with PAR or Grove. I just wanted to pass on the good results I got.

 

[rgchristy]

Same here. - I don't know what else to say. The filter is well worth the money invested.

Rich C

 

[DaveIN]

Curious, what antenna system are you using with the PAR filter?

 

[wmbio]

Even a cheap $2.72 FM trap from MCM electronics will fix the GRE reception problems, Just add inline to your antenna feed. This little FM filter has worked wonders for many GRE scanner owners to remove the de-sense of the front end.

link
http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/33-341


enjoy
Wmbio

 

[mtindor]

Even a cheap $2.72 FM trap from MCM electronics will fix the GRE reception problems, Just add inline to your antenna feed. This little FM filter has worked wonders for many GRE scanner owners to remove the de-sense of the front end.

That's certainly worth trying out first since it is so inexpensive.

But not every overload problem is related to FM Broadcast. PAR makes standard filters for FM Broadcast, TV, Paging, and will make any custom filter. PAR filters can have much deeper attenuation and much tighter skirts. Insertion loss is another thing to watch for... I don't know what type of loss is incurred across the frequencies one listens to when they insert one of those $2.72 FM traps inline. The PAR filters appear to have very low insertion loss across the board. With the PAR TV9 filter in place, I can't notice any decrease in signal strength on VHF-Lo, VHF-Hi, 400 mhz or 800 mhz. I'm betting I could probably see loss somewhere with a cheap filter tossed inline though.

Not to mention the fact that Dale stands by his products. Do I know him personally or have any stake his company? Nosir. But I've dealt with him numerous times on the phone and he has made me custom filters that have worked wonderfully.

Mike

 

[matt1234]

I'm using an Austin Ferret at around 30 feet in the air with 50 feet of LMR400. I am rather puzzled why they had one of their dipole sections set for 100 mhz (the offending fm station is at 100.7). I would think Austin would have wanted to attenuate the fm band as the Ferret is listed as a scanner antenna, and one that supposedly attenuates out of band signals, not an fm one.

The reason I went with the PAR as opposed to a cheaper filter is that the response is rated out to over 1 ghz (lots of 800 mhz stuff around here), and I did want to pick up the aircraft band which needs good skirts on the filter. The 3db attenuation point is 116 mhz, so I lost a slight bit of sensitivity lower down, but gained much more in the rest of the band.

 

[ratboy]

I have a "Monitenna" in my attic hooked up to my Pro-197, and without the PAR filter it has some intermod, and a local TV station is heard in the background often on some freqs. With it, it's much improved. The filter is worth the price. I had an FM trap and it did nothing much at all.