SDS100, not ideal for VHF?

[tzukows]

On my SDS100 at home so far, I have not really gotten VHF much on the stock rubber duck antenna.
Got Remtronix 920 antennas to see if that would help. Not much there either...

Next thing I ordered this from Amazon. No real improvement inside the house, but there was slight improvement outside on the roof of my Tahoe. the antenna wire and signal lead wire are both very small. I can see where it might not help all that much for carrying signal...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083D6D1FS?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

I am trying to pull 800, 400 and VHF at home. House is in a bit of a dingle, so terrain is putting me at a disadvantage for signal reception.

My work vehicle has a SDS200 with a tri-band mobile antenna. That pulls all frequencies in very well all over the area and still does very well at my house. It is able to pull in public safety VHF in the (150-160's mhz ranges) from 20 miles or more.

I know the 100 is not the same as 200, but based on what the car antenna can do for the 200... I am going to try a Larson NMO 150/450/800 tri-band antenna with BNC end connector, and a magnetic base.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P9JAVF6?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

I'll see how that works. Similar to the one on my work car, so I am hopeful results will be somewhat improved for my home location.

Lastly, I ordered a Comet telescoping antenna to see if VHF is helped with that. I heard good things about it, so worth a shot.

Issues in VHF reception seem to really be not the fault of the SDS100, but more my location, challenges in terrain and antennas tried up to this point.

While I am not looking for a permanent installation, I was looking to have a portable that I could take on the road that could still get fair VHF reception indoors at home or on the road.

Of course, large high gain fixed antenna for home is an option. But cost can be a factor and locations to install are limited (no outdoor or roof installations). Would have to be in the attic probably if I get to that point. But for now, I'll see what the telescoping and tri-band mobile antennas can do to help improve VHF reception for me.

I'll let you know what shakes out...

 

[Ubbe]

I know the 100 is not the same as 200

They have the same bandpass filters at the front end, the same receiver chip, the same DSP that demodulate the signal. What differs are that components are more spread out in the SDS200 and there are less interference between different sections of the scanner that makes the SDS200 have less birdies, internal spurious signals, but sensitivity, overload issues and adjacent channel interference will be the same.

/Ubbe

 

[rgchristy]

The number of radios that one owns, rarely has anything to do with "bragging rights". It usually comes down to circumstances and priorities.

 

[scanman1958]

I have made some of my personal reception issues known here on the forums with my SDS100 and my personal VHF high band poor reception. Some others have also expressed issues. So I decided to do a very basic test on my own and I did it far away from my regular home listening location. I relocated about 165miles away from a 2million plus population metro area to a very rural area in SW Missouri with the closest city being about eleven miles away with a population of 15,000. I used one single outside mounted antenna and used the current coax with said antenna. I tested VHF reception using all seven US weather channels on five different scanners. Four scanners were handheld, one was a base antenna. During my testing I simply swapped the BNC plug on the coax with each scanner as I tested them. I tested during the day, in the evening and very late at night.

Here is a list of the scanners used for the test.

396XT
BCT15X
SDS100
325P2
125AT

I will list each scanner by best reception to worst and then try to break down the results. As I said it was a very basic test.

#1 was the 396XT
#2 was the 125AT
#3 was the BCT15X
#4 was the 325P2
#5 was the SDS100

I am not savvy at all with making charts so I won't do that. I will try and explain each scanner and their reception qualities.

The 396XT received, at one time or another, all seven WX channels with a good degree of understandable reception. In the evening and late night it picked up all seven channels, and even if it was scratchy, I could understand what was said. During the day some of the weaker stations were unreadable but were received.

The 125AT regularly received three of the seven stations during the day and in the evening and late night the other four channels were weak and sometimes not understandable.

The BCT15X regularly received two of the seven stations during the day and a total of five stations during the evening and late night, though the extra three at night were pretty weak signals. Two of the channels were never heard.

The 325P2 regularly received two of the seven stations during the day. During evening and late night reception the other five stations were weak with at least one station fading in and out completely.

The SDS100 received only one station during the day. During the evening and late night hours the SDS received one other station and it was a very weak and scratchy signal. Five of the stations were never heard with the SDS100.


It was a very basic test and it proves nothing. I wanted to see for myself that the VHF high band reception, for my SDS100, is very poor even in an area without the possibility of RF interference and other possible reception issues.

At my home listening location the BCT15X and the SDS100 are by far the worst with their VHF reception. I did see an improvement with the 15X in the rural setting but the 100 pretty much stayed the same, with only one very weak station breaking through at night.

Hoping this might help others that are having the same issues as me but I doubt it may change the minds of others that have very good VHF reception with their 100. It's something to look at. Maybe there could be a fix...if there is such a thing.

I am still singing praises about the SDS100 P25, DMR and NXDN reception. It does that very well.

Have a great weekend everyone.

 

[RoninJoliet]

Thanks for your survey, it's always very interesting to see how some models perform in other locations,...I still use my 396xt and it has never been upgraded with new firmware and it performs fantastic, one thing that scanner is very loud in audio and battery time ,....I hope you enjoy your new location monitoring,...

 

[K9KLC]

Thanks for taking the time to both do the testing and your report on it. I appreciate it.

 

[AB5ID]

I tested VHF reception using all seven US weather channels on five different scanners.

Thank you for sharing!

 

[K9KLC]

Hoping this might help others that are having the same issues as me but I doubt it may change the minds of others that have very good VHF reception with their 100. It's something to look at.

I had a 100 here for about 10 days recently. I did not document my experiences however like you did. Kind of wish I would have now. Frankly for Analog VHF I use at home a 30 year old Relm scanner, and when out and about, the internal antenna on my G5 Unication, outdid any other "scanning device" I tested it against. I have a boatload of ham radio HT's that also can come out and play on VHF analog if need be. Again, thanks for your report.

 

[gmclam]

It's the old debate between sensitivity and selectivity. If you don't want an over-loaded front end (and better selectivity) you get a Uniden. If you want sensitivity (Dx listening and higher potential for an over-loaded front-end), get a GRE-made.

I notice that your list only includes Uniden models. How ironic/funny that you're doing a sensitivity test! LOL. I routinely run the scanners listed below from the same antenna (connected via multi-coupler) and see/hear the difference. One radio model is better suited for one type of signal and another model suited for something else.

There's a point where you can't beat a strong signal. Tough to tell the difference between models. But there's certainly times when using a specific model makes a huge difference. I use the SDS for Simulcast. I use the PSR(-310) for analog. And I'll use a PSR-500/PRO-197 for everything else.

 

[EAFrizzle]

For anything other than local VHF (and by local, I mean within my county or NWS footprint) either of my SDS 100/200 scanners is the last choice. My BC125AT and my BCD325P2 beat both of the SDSs all day long on VHF of any kind. If you buy an SDS thinking it's going to be the end-all, be-all of scanners, you're going to be quite disappointed.

They do 700/800 P25 simulcast supremely well, and do a good job on UHF DMR as well. But they're dogs when it comes to VHF, no matter what mode. For me, at this time, they're barely useful, and that's just the SDS100 because it's easily portable. For the ~$1500US that they cost, I could have bought a lot of radios that I would enjoy and get much more use from.

There's a lot of things I love about the SDS scanners. Piss-poor VHF performance nullifies much of that for me. But for most folks that get one, it turns out to be an all-in-one solution. So, yeah, I recommend them regularly. And, no, mine are not for sale. My local system is simulcast, so I'll keep them just for that.

 

[K9KLC]

My local system is simulcast, so I'll keep them just for that.

Mine too that I listen to 99.5 of the time but I've got Unication pagers for that. That test was at least "close"...

 

[buddrousa]

Your test is flawed unless you shared the antenna with all scanners and compared them at the same time on the same antenna.

 

[scanman1958]

To buddrousa. I DID. One antenna. One coax. One location. Only the time of day was different. The time of day was the same for each scanner test.

 

[scanman1958]

To RoninJoliet. I did not move. I just relocated to our fishing home near Bennett Spring State Park for four days. In part for my test away from the much more populated metro area.

 

[scanman1958]

To gmclam. Yeah, I noticed that too. All of my working scanners are Unidens. I have two old Regency's and four or five old Radio Shack scanners that really don't work any more. Sorry. I tested what I had. lol

 

[AB5ID]

I'm not sure I understand - were the tests conducted using all five scanners back-to-back on the same day(s)?
The best approach would have been to test all the scanners consecutively on the same day. Testing on different days with different scanners can introduce varying conditions, especially due to tropospheric ducting on 162 MHz.

 

[Ubbe]

A scanners performance are dependent of the local RF situation. If you have no strong signals or interferences then all scanners works fine. It's when you have issues with nearby transmitters and high power broadcast transmits when you notice if a scanner can handle that or loose sensitivity or even get into intermodulation issues.

Old GRE made scanners like Pro-2006 have a very bad sensitivity but are impossible to overload and doesn't de-sense on any strong signal. But if that specific location and frequency band have no interference issues then any other scanner would receive a signal much better. It is when you have a nearby strong transmitter that the Pro-2006 will outshine any other scanner.

You would select scanner model/brand depending of how and where you are going to use your scanner. There's no scanner that does it all, both high sensitivity and good strong signal handling. So depending of where a scanner user lives and how he uses his scanner he will have different opinions of scanner performance than most other users of the same scanner model.

A SDS100 scanner are far from ideal on any frequency band, it's probably the worst receiver used in any Uniden scanner, but are one of few options to handle simulcast systems.

/Ubbe

 

[buddrousa]

Then as I stated if you are not running a Antenna Combiner and all scanners scanning the same frequencies at the same time then your test is flawed. This is a fair test as pictured below.

 

[RichardKramer]

Your test is flawed unless you shared the antenna with all scanners and compared them at the same time on the same antenna.

Scanman1958 did his test with what he had the right way. He used the same antenna and cable with each scanner and used a stationary signal with the weather stations. When you have multiple scanners connected to a multi coupler to the same antenna with cables running next to each other and your scanners are generating all kinds of images and harmonics being that close together you are not going to get a suitable reading on which scanner is rxing better than another one. I have 15 scanners hooked to a multi coupler hooked to a preamp and I can switch cables to each scanner until I have every cable used with each scanner and I will get different readings on each scanner with each cable change.
Not a good test at all.

 

[buddrousa]

Sorry I do not see that in my setup I am using Stridsbergs and I have good range on all my scanners I run no preamp just what is built into the Stridsbergs for 0 loss.
The right way to compare anything is at the same time under the same exact conditions as we were taught in school.
I get 700/800 Trunking sites that are 41 plus air miles I get VHF Sites 50 plus air miles I get UHF sites 40 plus air miles with 28 foot ST2 Antenna.
Maybe I should make big changes and really increase my range.