Pulsing sound

[Wally46]

Anybody know what them random loud pulsing sounds are that make listening to the scanner very unpleasant? It will just randomly stop on a programmed frequency and make a loud noise anywhere from one second to constant until I push the avoid button. It's almost like they do it on purpose so nobody listens to their channel.

 

[RF23]

Anybody know what them random loud pulsing sounds are that make listening to the scanner very unpleasant? It will just randomly stop on a programmed frequency and make a loud noise anywhere from one second to constant until I push the avoid button. It's almost like they do it on purpose so nobody listens to their channel.

I have not had this problem, what systems are you listening to when you hear this and what kind of radio are you using?

Did it just start or has it been a problem for a long time?

It may be electrical interference from some equipment in your house (anything new in the house?) or close by.

If you are listening to analog and a strong digital signal is close by it will bleed-over like crazy much worse than analog and analog, as far as I can tell.

 

[Wally46]

It's been a problem for a long time. Maybe it's from having a digital and analog scanner connected to the same antenna using a splitter? Seems to be mostly on the analog stations. I always thought it was just some annoying noise the repeater towers would make.

 

[RF23]

It's been a problem for a long time. Maybe it's from having a digital and analog scanner connected to the same antenna using a splitter? Seems to be mostly on the analog stations. I always thought it was just some annoying noise the repeater towers would make.

Normally if you connect two radios without a splitter they can interfere with each other but the splitter should stop that from happening, at least in my experience it has.

Here is a site with some digital sound samples, see if any sounds like what you are hearing.


Digital*Modes*Samples

A quick way to choose which ones to check-out would be to visit RR Database first and see what digital systems you have in your area and look at those first.

 

[Wally46]

It sounds like the gandalf mobile dispatch sound. the other sound I get has much more static in it. Maybe it's the nearby hospital. Just annoying to have to hit the avoid button at random times. Thanks for the list of sounds.

 

[RF23]

If the hospital has a pager system it is usually very strong.

In audio options in Sentinel, other software or directly from your scanner you might consider doing CTCSS / DCS Search for your conventional freqs. Often this is the default for Uniden radios so you may have what I am going to describe already.

When you have done the above as the scanner scans it will display any found CTCSS tone frequency in your display. If you enter those found tone frequency in the audio options for each appropriate frequency your scanner will not stop on interfering signals but only on stations that use that tone to activate your squelch.

I had hospital pager problem a few years back and that is what I had to do and it worked great.

If some of your problem is bleed-over then you may need to buy some mono-frequency filters and put them on your coaxial cable (between you and the antenna) to reduce the signal strength mostly of just the frequency the filters are cut to. I have had to do this on a DOT transmitter only a block away.

I have also used a 14 element 2 - meter beam and turned it to null out an offending transmitter and it worked pretty good to in eliminating an interfering signal.