STARS and Pro96Com

[jehm1212]

Has anyone had any luck getting a consistent STARS decode % in the 90's with Pro96Com? I've been experimenting with my PSR-500 the past few days and can't get the decode rate out of the 80's on the software, even though the scanner says 99%.

It is hooked up to an external antenna and the attenuator is on. I am tuned into the Richmond tower. I know that simulcast distortion isn't a problem (only one tower per site). All I can think is that there are still some packets in STARS that Pro96Com doesn't know what to do with, so I may never get a 100% decode.

Anyone else have experience with this?

 

[mikey60]

Has anyone had any luck getting a consistent STARS decode % in the 90's with Pro96Com? I've been experimenting with my PSR-500 the past few days and can't get the decode rate out of the 80's on the software, even though the scanner says 99%.

It is hooked up to an external antenna and the attenuator is on. I am tuned into the Richmond tower. I know that simulcast distortion isn't a problem (only one tower per site). All I can think is that there are still some packets in STARS that Pro96Com doesn't know what to do with, so I may never get a 100% decode.

Anyone else have experience with this?

The decode rate in Pro96Com is based on 40 control channel messages per second. STARS uses some extended packet messages, which the scanner still counts in it's decode rate, but Pro96Com does not. Some messages on the system take as many as 3 control channel messages to transmit the data, Pro96Com counts this as 1 message, thus why you'll see a lower decode rate.

I'll see if I can make some changes in that area to make this a more realistic value.

Mike

 

[jehm1212]

Thanks for the quick response. I appreciate the feedback.