I was at the Rome airshow yesterday with a friend. We both had radios to hear the action from the air. I had my Uniden 396XT, and he had a ham radio HT (Yaesu VX-5R).
At first, I noticed a difference between our two radios while listening to air boss. We both heard him fine, but my friend's HT would break squelch and start playing the audio right away, but my Uniden would delay about half a second before I started to hear anything. While doing this, we were both parked on the air boss frequency and not scanning.
Over and over again, my radio would delay playing the audio from air boss or any aircraft. Some transmissions are so fast, I missed the quick response completely, but my friend heard them fine. I used the keypad and edited a couple settings on my Uniden that completely fixed the problem:
First I changed the modulation type from the default of AUTO, and made it AM.
Second I changed the audio type from the default of ALL (analog & digital), and made it ANALOG ONLY.
Once these changes were made, my Uniden heard signals as quick as the Yaesu HT. I was happy. Moral of the story... I doubt the aircraft band will ever change from AM modulation and ANALOG audio in my life time. Perhaps the Uniden has to quickly analyze each signal to properly decode it? That's usually fine, but at the air field yesterday, it was not. Forcing the radio into the proper mode and audio type totally fixed that anoying delay. Other scanner enthusiasts may want to look into these settings for better performance on their scanners as well.
Tim, WK4U
At first, I noticed a difference between our two radios while listening to air boss. We both heard him fine, but my friend's HT would break squelch and start playing the audio right away, but my Uniden would delay about half a second before I started to hear anything. While doing this, we were both parked on the air boss frequency and not scanning.
Over and over again, my radio would delay playing the audio from air boss or any aircraft. Some transmissions are so fast, I missed the quick response completely, but my friend heard them fine. I used the keypad and edited a couple settings on my Uniden that completely fixed the problem:
First I changed the modulation type from the default of AUTO, and made it AM.
Second I changed the audio type from the default of ALL (analog & digital), and made it ANALOG ONLY.
Once these changes were made, my Uniden heard signals as quick as the Yaesu HT. I was happy. Moral of the story... I doubt the aircraft band will ever change from AM modulation and ANALOG audio in my life time. Perhaps the Uniden has to quickly analyze each signal to properly decode it? That's usually fine, but at the air field yesterday, it was not. Forcing the radio into the proper mode and audio type totally fixed that anoying delay. Other scanner enthusiasts may want to look into these settings for better performance on their scanners as well.
Tim, WK4U
