PRO 652 questions, reception, signal meter

[mnrick]

I have a PRO 652 scanner that I bought a few years ago. Where I was living I had a lot of reception issues (dead air signals, and just intermittent good reception or no reception at all for long periods) and had pretty much given up on trying to listen to it.

I moved a few months ago and am doing a little better. Now I am able to monitor the county that I live in with no problems (I am in Scott County, MN, Near Minneapolis) but my signal meter shows very weak even though I can step outside here and see the water tower where I know one of the towers is.

I don't really understand the whole trunking thing, I get how it works but not how towers are assigned or why I can be so close to a tower and still have a weak signal showing.

I am wondering if there is a setting on the radio that is low or off that is making me not pick up signals very good as I cannot get anything from any of the adjacent counties unless I put them in under the county that I am in. For example, If I put in Dakota County TG's on the Dakota County Towers I get absolutely nothing but if I put them in with the Scott County towers then I get them intermittently, whenever their communications jump over to this system for some reason.

If need be I can make a video of what I am seeing with the signal meter, post it and put a link so that someone can look at it and see what I mean.

 

[marksmith]

You might check and verify that you do not have attenuation turned on. That's the one thing I can think of that would reduce an incoming strong signal.

It is wh as t it is intended to do for very strong signsls, but it is possible it could be on in the situation you describe.

A line of sight to the tower should produce a very strong signal.

536/436/ws1095/996p2/996xt/325p2/396xt/psr800/396t/HP-1/HP-2 & others

 

[mnrick]

The Attenuator is not on. I can turn it on and the "A" shows in the display and then I turn it off and it is gone

I am wondering why I am having the "pri" showing in the display, as far as I know I never set any priority channels and I cannot figure out how to get that to go away..

 

[ScannerSK]

The Attenuator is not on. I can turn it on and the "A" shows in the display and then I turn it off and it is gone

I am wondering why I am having the "pri" showing in the display, as far as I know I never set any priority channels and I cannot figure out how to get that to go away..

It could be caused by desense (too much RF signal) however I would think desense would register as a strong signal on the meter scale on the PRO-652 scanner.

I believe a small "pri" means priority checking is turned off while "PRI" in all caps means priority checking is turned on. I only use priority checking on digital talk groups (not on conventional channels as this causes interruptions in reception).

Shawn

 

[RF-Guy-El-Loco]

Pro 652 Meter

Find a local conventional frequency of some kind anything, (you might try a search) or the noaa weather channel. See what the meter indicates. If it shows 0 or low, and you believe it should be higher, then you have the RSSI meter level issue. There is a thread about this somewhere. I ran into it myself. You can't adjust the meter level points on the scanner itself, you need software like Win 500. These levels may have gotten misadjusted or are somehow now out of whack.

I had good levels for everything, both conventional and an APCO P-25 system gave me full bars all the time on my Pro 652. I had not programmed this scanner thru the computer before then. Then I ran the Win 500 software with the default RSSI signal levels (under Extended Settings, a box labeled RSSI Bar Thresholds). I let it program in the default signal levels. Then the Signal Meter on the scanner didn't register a thing. Zero. Broken? So I tried it again, same result. Duh. I took my "good Pro 651", and copied in all the programming> To the software this time, saved it to a file and then compared the RSSI meter levels. Very different number thresholds! The stock Radio Shack RSSI Bar levels (factory set) are what I have listed below. These were in the thing before I programed it. Local conventional channels give me full bars with this setup below, as do a nearby P-25 trunking system. These levels correspond to what I see on my other scanner's level meters. But you can't adjust these thru the scanner keypad, you'll need software. I'm pleased with the Win500 software for these scanners, you can try it out and adjust meter levels there. But the default RSSI meter levels listed (in that software) didn't work for me. These are my Orig. RSSI RS factory #s.

Pro 651/652 RSSI Bar Levels (Original Radio Shack Factory Setup I had in the 651/652 units)
Level 1--190
Level 2--230
Level 3--260
Level 4--290
Level 5--320

 

[RF-Guy-El-Loco]

Pro 652 Reception

I forgot to add that Trunking Systems are very strange. Sometimes the closer tower has bad fading signals (for you) on it but it Has the talkgroups you want to hear. And the tower with the best signals is much further away but it does Not have all the talkgroups you want to hear. My situation. The scanner parks on the Control Channel all the time until it receives a voice channel and then it switches there. I've tried running with two or more control channels loaded in, but it seems to just confuse the scanner and it does poorly. Also, I've found that even if you get 100% control channel signal, the Actual Voice Channels themselves may be weak and fade, so you get good control channel, but bad voice channels. And when you don't have enough control channel signal level, you lose a lot of the talkgroup chatter. But they assign talkgroups based on throwing darts at a map! That should clear it all up. It works somewhat like the Cell Sites for cell phones. The Police call will hit the nearest site tower, wherever this is, but certain site towers may only be "setup" by the Radio Techs to transmit a certain subset of all the talkgroups available on that particular system. This is a Complete & Total Mess! Try Everything, find what works even if that seems idiotic. Antenna and scanner location. A lot of daily experimental trial and error goes a long way.

 

[Wackyracer]

not familiar with this model but have you tried reinstalling the latest firmware?

 

[trp2525]

not familiar with this model but have you tried reinstalling the latest firmware?

The latest/newest CPU firmware for the PRO-651/PRO-652 is 2.9 available here: http://forums.radioreference.com/ra...e-scanner-firmware-updates-2.html#post2583244

 

[Blackswan73]

The latest/newest CPU firmware for the PRO-651/PRO-652 is 2.9 available here: http://forums.radioreference.com/ra...e-scanner-firmware-updates-2.html#post2583244

If I recall, that firmware was for a bricked radio. There was no need to use it if the radio wasn't bricked. It did offer a tween for EDACs systems, but mainly was to unbrick radios that had been flashed with the wrong firmware.