Settings for local listening

[ofd8001]

While it is true you should look for horses when you hear hoofbeats, every now and then a zebra shows up. Perhaps the receiver in the scanner is going bad or being affected by something. Is this something that has just happened, or is this a new scanner?

Can you try taking the scanner a little closer to a site and see if anything changes?

What happens if you take the scanner a short distance (1/4 mile) from your home? Perhaps there is something causing desensitization/interference.

 

[stmills]

Are you able to try the scanner at different locations in the building, or possibly outisde on the Northside.
If you insert an unfolded paper clip into the center pin of the bnc jack do you get any reception?
Do you have a piece of coax that you could strip the jacket off, separate the braid from the center core and then hang this out the window as a test antenna and see if it changes your signal?
There are multiple possibilities why you are having issues.
The Hennepin Towers around you are:
Hennepin Home School to the West North West - this site has both Hennepin East and West- so I suspect you are not getting signal from here since you don't get much on Hennepin West
HW 169 in Edina- Straight North of you
3 sites to the East North East - Hennepin Truck Station, Health Partners Building, And MSP Airport, MSP airport also House a Ramsey site and you aren't getting this so I am ruling this site out, but still leave the other 2.
South you have the Dakota and Scott sites and you are getting Dakota well, Last to the Southwest is the Hennepin site in Shakopee which is aimed towards you a bit of a distance but clear shot.

 

[mnrick]

Just to clarify, this is a base scanner, not a portable. I bought it new, in the box, from Radio Shack during the Black Friday sale last winter.

Right now at the moment I am listening to my Dakota scan bank, and it is coming in very well, I am getting everything with no issues.

When I lock that out and put in my 7 banks that are off the Hennepin East system I start getting the issues.

Scott County does not come in all that well. I get it once in awhile but there are issues. Carver is hit and miss also.

The scanner works, the antenna works but there is a issue with some of the things I am trying to listen to and I am thinking it is a simulcast issue.

 

[ofd8001]

I am thinking it is a simulcast issue.

I agree - what you are describing is classic for simulcast distortion.

 

[mnrick]

My options really are limited because this is a base scanner and needs to be plugged in. All the windows in my unit face one direction.

I tried the paperclip and I am having the same issue with that. Garbled or it stops on a channel and I don't hear anything or I am just getting nothing at all. On a Saturday night it should be busy and the paperclip is not doing any better than the stock antenna or the 800 Mhz antenna that I bought this week.

I mentioned somewhere here before that I used to be into this back before the changeover. I was able to sit at home and listen to VHF all the way across the metro, UHF was a little weaker, I could get Minneapolis but not St. Paul. The only things on 800 back then were Bloomington & Eden Prairie and a few local channels for Minnetonka and Maple Grove.

I knew 800 has a shorter range but I did not anticipate this issue that I am having here.

Is there anything I can do with the settings in the scanner that might improve this issue?

 

[NDRADIONUT]

Try an outdoor directional antenna...

 

[ofd8001]

Unfortunately I know little about this model scanner. If you had a Uniden, I'd suggest turning site attenutor On and tinker with the P25 Adjust Mode and P25 Adjust Level settings. You might check around and see if such settings are available on your scanner.

 

[stmills]

The VHF and UHF systems were running 300 to 600 watts ERP, the Hennepin East towers have ERPs from 28 to 140 most about 60. And these systems had coverage further beyond the borders to provide units coverage if they had to go outside the jurisdiction. The 800 digital trucked system is designed to cover the jurisdiction and then units roam to surrounding systems as needed.
I mapped the propagation for each Hennepin East tower and your area Shakopee has the best coverage, followed by Edina, Bloomington and Minnetonka are fringe coverage at best. MSP and Health Partners are poor. The paper clip antenna test is to see if you can drop the weaker signal if you were receiving from multiple towers. I agree with NDradionut that an outdoor directional antenna are the best option, second best is a omni directional outdoor antenna.

 

[WD0AKZ]

FWIW I have been chasing the same problem as the MNRICK for almost a year now with no success. I live in Oakdale about 1 mile North of the 694/494/94 intersection and attempting to listen to Washington County on 853.737350 SY40F T0105 BEE07. I started out with a SDR dongle using Unitrunker and DSD+, got the bug and bought a Uniden BCD396XT, and then found a Radio Shack Pro-96 at a garage sale. I have the same results on all three units, strong signal yet low decode percentage (<50%). I'm sure it's due to my location and a result of simulcast/multipath and Intermod. The Rx signal strength is strong, but attenuating the signal through the internal ATT or external ones reduces the signal but has no effect on the decoding. I can take the PRO-96 and park just south of the tower and get no decode yet go a few miles farther south into a shopping center with lots of buildings and find spots where the decoding shoots up to near 100% (and of course the audio is clear). For a while last winter (using the 396XT) I found one spot on a East facing window (I live in a Co-op and only have N & E windows) and with two 90 degree adapters on the OEM rubber duck antenna configured in a horizontal position I was getting 80-90% decoding, then spring came along an it went back to <50% and is pretty much useless. Using Dakota, Hennepin E/W, and Ramsey may have lower signal strength at my location but the result is still the same, very poor decoding. I'm starting to think more about the Intermod possibility. Maybe I'm just stuck in a high RF environment. :-(

So now to minimize the possible multipath issues I'm collecting the parts to build a waveguide (Cantenna) 850 MHz antenna. This should be interesting... 8.75" Diameter and about 25" long. Not really designed for hand held use.

Still Having Fun!

George
WD0AKZ