SDS sale again soon?

[RetiredVolunteer]

While my SDS units’ performance on P25 systems is usually fantastic, with what I have experienced, I would totally agreed that both their performance on VHF is absolutely lousy.

 

[jonwienke]

While my SDS units’ performance on P25 systems is usually fantastic, with what I have experienced, I would totally agreed that both their performance on VHF is absolutely lousy.

Most likely that's more of an antenna issue than a scanner issue. Unless you're running multiple radios off the same antenna through a splitter or multicoupler, the difference is mostly antenna performance, rather than receiver performance. In this particular setup, there's essentially zero difference in reception between the 436, 536, SDS100, and SDS200.



The discone feeds into a Stridsberg multicoupler, which feeds the all the radios with equal signal.

Also, the Uniden stock rubber ducky is pretty lousy on VHF.

 

[Bob1955]

It's clear you don't actually own a SDS100, and are merely regurgitating secondhand misinformation and urban legends without attempting to apply logic and common sense.

The first batch of SDS100 scanners shipped with a battery that only lasted about 5 hours. But Uniden was clear about what the battery life would be for the early adopters, and promised a free larger battery with an 8-hour runtime, once they became available, to everyone who purchased one of the initial batch, BEFORE the first SDS100 shipped. And Uniden delivered on that promise.

Some people complain that the SDS100 audio is too tinny. It's not possible to fit a speaker with good low-frequency response into a SDS100 case. If you want more bottom end from the speaker, you need to make both the speaker and its enclosure larger. There's plenty of bass if you listen on headphones or an external speaker, though. Other people say the SDS100 audio is fine, and the SDS200 has too much bass. You can't please everyone.

And the fact remains that without good analog receiver performance, you can't have good digital receiver performance. You can't decode meaningful bits from static; the receiver has to send a reasonably clean RF waveform to the ADC before the digital side can do its mathemagical stuff. It's mathematically impossible (literally) for a digital radio receiver to have digital performance better than its analog performance, because all signals start out analog when they come in from the antenna.

jonwienke, You make good sense on the first batch of SDS100 and Uniden DID address the problem. And it is true that you cannot please everyone.
Have a great Saturday night. We have our first 3" snowfall here in Lower Westchester County, NY-Winter Weather Advisory.

 

[Bob1955]

So you have seen the SDS500?
[/QUOTE
No, have you?

 

[KevinC]

Since no one knows when the next "sale" will be and this has gone way off-topic I think we're done.