pro197 plays gibberish on police band?

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hwolf

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I used to listen to scanner years ago. well today i picked up a new one at radio shack a pro197. the guy behind the counter only knew that to pick up the hampton police i needed a digital scanner. after hours of trying to manually program it my self i went in and bought the programing cable and software that came with it yada yada yada. i live in hampton va. i loaded the freqs via the software very nice! everything works well except that the hampton police sound like gibberish everything else comes in fine. i live less than a mile from the tower. the giberish comes in on all five bars so i know im picking up transmission.

whats listed here on radio reference is

type
is project 25 phase I (fdma)

system voice
apco-25 common air interface exclusive

am i doing something wrong?

is the radio incapable of picking up the hampton pd?

i have allready upgraded the firmware to version 2.0.

someone help me please.

thanks hwolf
 

mm

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oregon
Typical rat shack salesman who just wanted to make a sales, he could have at least mentioned that Hampton PD is ENCRYPTED P25.

I'd take the radio back unless there's another agency that is P25 unencrypted that your interested in listening to.
 

michaelmikesj

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Athol, Idaho
You said it mm. Typical Rat Shack B.S. Unfortuantely Hampton is encrypted. You won't here anything but but scrambled noise. Some Rat Shack phone salesman tried to tell me the 194 and the 107 are digital scanners. I told him even though they say they will reeceive the 700 Mhz band doesn't mean they can scramble the digital code comming fron the 700 Mhz band. He got pissed and asked me to leave his store. Go figure. I buy my stuff from Scanner Master from now on.
 

IredellMon

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Jan 23, 2012
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I got the dubbing cable at RS yesterday and told the guy I needed an in-line jack to go with it. He said, "you mean a coupler?" I told him, "Not exactly, an in line jack with solder lugs that I can wire myself." He said, "I'm sorry, not familiar with your terminology" and started looking at the display board like he would know it when he saw it. So I went to the small parts drawers and in 30 seconds had the 1/8" inline phone jack (or at least that's what the description said on the Radio Shack packaging). I looked at his name tag thinking I would mention his ignorance of basic electronics and store inventory to the store manager, but then saw that his name tag said he WAS the manager. With so many people out of work i don't know why someone like this is the manager of a RS, but it is the same reason that I only go there when I need something right away and don't want to wait on an Internet order.
If I were you I think I would return the scanner and do some more research, and maybe pick up a used scanner for what you CAN receive.
 

hwolf

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thanks

encrypted HA. is there a radio out there that i can purchase to pick up the signal? legally of course.

thanks for the fast response.
 

fxdscon

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encrypted HA. is there a radio out there that i can purchase to pick up the signal? legally of course.

thanks for the fast response.


No, unfortunately there isn't any scanner on the market that will de-code encrypted comms. You will hear only the sound you are hearing now.
 
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