Is it that bad?
SDS100/SDS200: SDS100 vs Pro-106
- Thread starter GregTec86
- Start date
- Status
Explain better.
ToddWilkinson
ScanMN
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2021
- Messages
- 335
Had mine a week, got cold solder and a battery expanded, got it fixed sold it for 400 and bought a bcd436 and 4 SDR'S running at home
DVINTHEHOUSEMAN
Up North
I would never think of throwing something that costs $650 away unless it was truly broken beyond repair.
The SDS does suck for some applications. P25 Simulcast is its main purpose, and also DMR and NXDN work decently well on it. It's slow at conventional scanning (40 ch/s about) so it's easily outperformed by something like the PRO-106 in that region.
Reception and sound quality aren't the greatest either, for starters the SDS is essentially an SDR slapped onto a BCD436HP, which creates the audio lag time and the compressed sounding analog audio. The antenna included with the scanner is lackluster at best, and the receiver isn't extremely sensitive to begin with. In addition, the filtering on the scanner is 10 MHz wide, thanks to the TV tuner chip they used to save money. The filter adjustments do help most of the time, but it's always 10 MHz wide, which causes strong stations within that bandwidth to drown out the weaker signals.
The SDS does serve its purpose, but it's not going to be your first choice if you were in an area without P25 simulcast.
My old Pro-106 and PSR-500 (Same radio, different "makes" receives MUCH more than either of my SDS-200's. It sounds awfully bad a lot of the time, but I can copy about 90%. The SDS200 sounds a lot better, except for it's lack of any AVC so some transmissions are almost impossible to understand because the audio is so low, and OTHERS BLAST IN. The GRE made radios don't have this problem, but the simulcast issues are always there. I haven't found any solution that improves the SDS radios to equal the RF performance of the old GRE's. Filters, antennas, etc have mostly been a waste of money and effort. I have an FM trap on my home SDS200 and that has at least helped it receive a little better, but it wasn't cheap.
I've found this symptom to be true in "patched" systems, either from an analog system to a trunking system, or from one trunking system to another. If you have Unit ID or Unit ID w/name, you'd get a better idea if it's being patched, since many "patched" systems use a single talkgroup, or in some cases, it won't transmit a talkgroup either. If you program yourself, utilize favorite lists, you can make Volume Offset adjustments per talkgroups or by frequency on an analog system. You don't have these options if you don't create favorite lists. Without knowing your programming, I can't form an opinion on the rest of the "issues" you describe.
Had to make an edit...patch systems sometimes transmit with 1 radio ID, or at times, not at all.
- Status
