Should my Pro-96 be this deaf?

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jay427

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as note I did post this thread on our local scanfan fourm here.

http://scanfan.hoff.org/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1219270982

So here is the deal.

I live in Ramsey Mn and I would like to make my Pro-96 hear.
CPU F1.3
DSP-APP U1.4
DSP-VOC V F1.0
800Mhz Antenna

I have had this radio for about 2 years and I kept wating for all the changes to the Anoka county radio system with hopes that it would improve over here. I have seen a new Anoka county radio tower in my city, rebanding, firmware updates etc. with really no great improvements.

So last night I thought I would go for a drive and play with this thing and do a little testing and this is what I found out.

I stopped at a 3 places for 5 minutes each and kept track of readable and non-readable calls. Not very scientific but it’s a start.

First stop, 300 feet from the tower, no rain, about 6:00pm.
20 perfect calls and 2 bad garbled calls.

Second stop, 1.1 miles from the tower, rain, 600 feet from a cell tower, about 6:15pm.
35 perfect calls and 1 bad garbled calls.

Third stop (home in the driveway), 3.2 miles from the tower, no rain, 6:30pm.
8 perfect calls and 21 bad garbled calls.

When driving down the road you could tell at about 2 miles from the tower that the calls all went south with about a 30%-40% copy rate, there was no really good place to stop at this point.

My house elevation is about 900 feet and the base of the tower is at about 890 feet.

If you go here #1 is the tower and #2 is my house.

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v...er____~Point.rj85c876bkgv_House____&encType=1

For what ever reason you need to move the window on the above link to the left a little to see the tower location

So what should I expect?

I would by a new radio if that would work.

After being a HAM for 20 years it would seem to me that being 3.2 miles from the tower I should be in like flyn.

I did make a nice beam that I put in my attic and that does help but its still not great, I could put it outside and up about 40 feet but that seems just crazy, this should be hand held coverage easy I would think.

Maybe this radio is just that deaf.

So what do you all think?

Thanks all

Jay
 

ka3jjz

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Dumb question - attenuator turned on by accident? (been there, done that...)

Observations - GRE radios - the PRO-96 is one - are famous for desense issues. Do you have a NexHell tower close to you?

73 Mike
 

N8IAA

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Hate to mention the obvious---rain, leaves, buildings, snow, etc.. Block 800Mhz transmissions and receptions. Another thing with where you live, it is a multi-site antenna system. You need to put in the strongest tower for where you will monitor the most. Leave the squelch wide open and hope for dry days, leafless trees and no buildings in the line of site to the tower. Not to mention any thing else that would interfere with the signal. The worst radio I've ever owned for desense is the Uniden BC-780. I am surrounded by cell towers and the 96 does not get hit like that radio did.
Larry
 

jay427

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Dumb question - attenuator turned on by accident? (been there, done that...)

Observations - GRE radios - the PRO-96 is one - are famous for desense issues. Do you have a NexHell tower close to you?

73 Mike

good to go there, its off, I did try with it on for giggles, made it worse as would be expected.
 

jay427

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Hate to mention the obvious---rain, leaves, buildings, snow, etc.. Block 800Mhz transmissions and receptions. Another thing with where you live, it is a multi-site antenna system. You need to put in the strongest tower for where you will monitor the most. Leave the squelch wide open and hope for dry days, leafless trees and no buildings in the line of site to the tower. Not to mention any thing else that would interfere with the signal. The worst radio I've ever owned for desense is the Uniden BC-780. I am surrounded by cell towers and the 96 does not get hit like that radio did.
Larry


Been monitoring this in all kinds of weather, rain, snow, leaves, no leaves, just does not seem to make difference over the last 2 years. As far a I know this is a muti-cast system so there is only onle control channel to monitor.

I really have to wonder if the radio has such a deaf front end. I can here other counties 30 miles away on VHF, its a great UHF/VHF rig.

I live in a area that all just housing between us and the tower, no big buildings, larger 2 acre lots, for the love of god most of the power lines are underground, there is one overhead line between us and the tower. About ready to toss this thing out.

I have heard some people having a issue witht the BNC connector comming off the board, have not check that. With how well it works on are local repeaters etc I would not think the BNC conector would be a issue.
 

N8IAA

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You may want to go back to DSP version 1.3. The 1.4 was a fix for the Ohio MARCS system TG's. I put 1.3 back into my scanner and it works more than adequately. I'll always have the newer one for when I go home to visit in Cleveland. Just wondering if the EDACS system is no longer ProVoice.
Larry
 
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N8IAA

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You do realize that your county has re-banded. It might be wise to go to the Minnesota forum and ask how to program the 96 for your area.
Larry
 

jay427

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You may want to go back to DSP version 1.3. The 1.4 was a fix for the Ohio MARCS system TG's. I put 1.3 back into my scanner and it works more than adequately. I'll always have the newer one for when I go home to visit in Cleveland. Just wondering if the EDACS system is no longer ProVoice.
Larry

Had the same issue with 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4
 

jay427

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You do realize that your county has re-banded. It might be wise to go to the Minnesota forum and ask how to program the 96 for your area.
Larry


Yep, know about that, made the changes a few weeks ago, that was suppose to make it better, agian no changes.
 

tommyscan

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check the bnc connector.Although rare on that scanner it might be loose enough to make the scanner go deaf!! Just had my psr500 repaired for that reason. Just a suggestion.
 

SCPD

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yes, check the BNC inside the scanner & look to se if the lil thin wire is still soldered tight to the connector
 

N8IAA

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Just for giggles, Jay, have you done a re-initializing of the radio? Then make a new program in Win96 and reprogram the radio? It could be way something is programmed or an internal glitch in the radio that re-initializing could fix. Just a thought. Something else that came to mind, with the base frequency changing, did the offset and step change too? There is a system in Ohio that when programming into the 96, one has to change the base, offset, and step to get the radio to TT.
Larry
 
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jay427

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I have not, been stuck at work and no time to play, I hope to this weekend.

After the reboot will I need to update the firmware again to?
 

pappy1

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Could be the tower next to you is transmitting the signal on one of the other frequency and you are receiving the cc on a different tower further away.
Load all freq's into 1 bank [by hand] and set it up as conv. and scan that bank. See if you can get the signal strenth you are looking for that way.
Pappy1

BTW rebooting will not affect the firmware.
 
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