Thank you for your reply ScannerSK. On the RadioRefernce info page for my area, it has notes for my scanning area that says: "Simulcast site owned by Butler County". So I assume that there is no solution to my scanning issues as a result of the Simulcast in my area unless I use a directional antenna? Are there any digital scanners on the market which can work with Simulcast areas? Thanks.
That site could be a bear. The notes for the Butler county site say it has 15 tower locations so getting a signal from just one site could be hard.
Try the suggestions that gewecke mentions and you may get lucky where only one site is providing the signal which is the goal when trying to cure simulcast issues. You will never stop reception from all the other tower locations but if you can maximize the signal so it is coming from one tower stronger than the others may be all that is needed.
I've seen this system mentioned pretty often which makes me think it is a hard one so it could require a lot of experimenting to try and find a good spot in your home using an internal antenna.
As far as different radios go, the Uniden 436HP (portable) and 536HP (mobile or base) do usually provide better reception of simulcast systems.
In your case, it would be the portable or 436HP that would be a handheld model similar to your PSR500.
You can set the P25 decode mode to manual for this system or site and then try different values for the threshold level. The PSR500 attempts to guess the correct threshold value but when hearing more than one tower on the same frequency, the radio can get confused and never settle on a decent value.
The 436HP will also do P25 Phase II which your PSR500 or the RadioShack model will not do in the event they do turn on Phase II mode on the system.
I have a similar situation here with a simulcast county system that covers three counties.
My PSR500 or 600 had very bad simulcast issues on this system but when I bought my first Uniden 536HP, the simulcast issue was virtually gone once I set the P25 mode to Manual and found the level the site liked was 7 or 6.
I later bought a second 536HP and two 436HP portable models almost a year apart for the 436HP model.
The reception of this simulcast site was night and day different from my PSR 500 or 600.
I went from a site that I could hardly monitor to a site that is now nearly crystal clear
Going from a GRE based radio to a Uniden does have a learning curve that can be intimidating at first but the Sentinel software the comes with the 436HP actually works very well and becomes easier the more you use it.
There are many users in the Uniden forums that will help you out.
Of course these Uniden models are not cheap, they do outperform the GRE model you listed by a wide margin in most cases when it comes to simulcast issues. If you want to stay with a portable model, the 436HP is the cheaper of the two by $100 dollars or so.
I knew the 536HP handled simulcast issues better than any previous model but I was not expecting it to handle it nearly as well as it did.
The setting that made the biggest change for me was going into the site and changing the P25 Digital Threshold Mode from Auto to Manual and then changing the Digital Threshold Level to a setting of 7. Your site may need a different level but there is a diagnostic screen you can view that will show the Error rate. Ideally, you want that to read zero but that is where you play with the level and find the one that gives you the lowest error rate number. You can actually change the level on the fly while you are receiving a talkgroup and have the diagnostic line displayed. If the talkgroup goes silent while trying different levels, just stop and wait until a talkgroup comes back on the air. You also try and adjust the level for the lowest reading while they are actually talking and not during pauses in the audio.
I'm not saying this will make your reception perfect but it stands a darn good chance that it may.
The other nice thing about the 4 or 536HP is the fact that you can set the digital mode to manual for every site you have programmed and also set the level to whichever gives you the best results for each site you monitor.
Some of the other new Uniden models do have a hidden menu you access at power on and then you can manipulate the digital levels but those settings affect all sites in the radio and don't allow for setting each site to a different level. Only the BCD436HP and BCD536HP models allow each site to be set individually which is what you want.
I wish Uniden would release a cheaper model that allowed changing the digital setting for each site but they have not done that since the really old 996T models. When they came out with the 996
XT models, they also removed that option.
The Home Patrol 1 series brought back a manual digital mode setting that worked but is never made it past the Beta stage of that models firmware.
I don't know if the Home Patrol 2 also had the beta firmware that allowed the user to set the mode to Manual but if so, it should also work and the Home Patrol 2 also does P25 Phase II. The biggest problem with this beta firmware was the fact that you had to change the digital mode to manual each time you turned the radio on.
So the BCD436HP is what I'd recommend for the Ohio Marc's-IP system.
Before doing anything, you may ask if the database administrator for this forum will move it from the GRE forum over to the Ohio forum where you will probably get much better answers than you are here as the Ohio forum will have many users that monitor that system and should be able to provide you with much better answers for the Marc's-IP system.
The GRE radios are also known for front end problems. This includes the cloned models that RadioShack sold such as the PRO-106 that you also purchased, Since Whistler bought the rights from GRE, the front end problem also carried over to whatever model is the clone of the PSR-500. I don't recall which Whistler model is the clone from the GRE PSR-500. But whichever it is, you don't want it!
One nice thing if you do purchase a Uniden BCD436HP is the fact that you don't need to become a Premium Subscriber here as that is included with Uniden's Sentinel software. There are advantages to becoming a premium member here but for now, you don't need it if you purchase the Uniden model mentioned above.
So... I'd start by seeing if this forums database admin or moderator will move this thread over to the Ohio forum where there will be a bunch of Ohio Marc's-IP system users. Those users will hopefully help you with a good radio selection as well as setup settings.
If you get stuck with the Uniden 436HP setup part, start a new thread in one of the Uniden forums where someone will help you get the 436HP setup and an Ohio Marc's-IP system favorites list created. I strongly suggest setting up a favorite list for the Marc's-IP system as that allows you to turn features on and off for the Marc's-IP system and then turn off the feature to scan from the main database. That makes changes a lot easier as you will only be changing the Marc's-IP system you created.
There is a good chance that just buying the 436HP and setting up a Mark's-IP favorite will fix your reception problems.
At this point, you do not need to purchase any of Uniden's feature updates like Pro-Voice or DMR. You only need to update the radio to the latest firmware which is all done from the Sentinel program. Sentinel itself may also need to be updated but the Uniden forum will have the instructions how to do that.
This is a lot of info but it is not really near as hard as it may seem.
Once you have Sentinel updated and the radios firmware updated, then someone in the Ohio forum should be able to walk you through setting up a Marc's-IP favorite list and turning off the main database so you are only scanning your Marc's favorite list.
Once that is done, hopefully someone will have told you how to change and set the Digital Mode settings to work the best for the Marc's system and also assign quick keys.
Once you get a system setup through Sentinel, it gets easier with each system you add at a later time.
