Reception issues on 396XT

[opticalserenity]

I have the 396XT, and while overall I'd say it's the best scanner I've used, its very tough to wrap my mind around this being a "good" radio after spending over a decade carrying Motorola gear on trunking systems.

For example, I was driving around the other night, and had a colleague in the car with an XTS5000 on a P25 800 system. Now, we were in the middle of the county, and while the 396XT would pick up the talk groups, it would sometimes (often) lose them. For example, a long fire dispatch, I'd get 70%-80% and it would cut in and out. The XTS, would get 100%.

Now, I know it's not a fair comparison, that's tuned to only 800 and is $4500 more than my radio. I get that. But, it shouldn't be this much of a difference, should it?

So, I'm going to install a mobile antenna on the car. Haven't decided on which just yet, but it needs something. Any ideas?

BTW, I have the radio shack/GRE 800mhz BNC antenna on it, and tried to keep it up right up to the window.

The system I'm referring to is the Cobb County, GA system. And, you don't even want to hear how bad my experience was with the Atlanta P25 system.

 

[MTS2000des]

the problem is because scanners can't cope well with the CQPSK-LSM as "real" system radios do.

CQPSK-LSM is a method used by simulcast systems, specifically Astro25 simulcast systems such as Cobb county use.

you can try different antennas, sometimes LESS antenna (to isolate a signal from a nearby site) is MORE, or a directional antenna. But in the end, it's just how it's gonna be with scanners, until some effort is made to properly decode CQPSK-LSM by the manufacturers.

keep in mind, CQPSK-LSM is complex, and even "real" radios have trouble in some areas due to mutipath distortion, cellular interference, etc. YMMV.