Like the tile says- has anyone been having issues receiving St Mary's County recently? I have a SDS100 and a BCD996P2; up until recently both have worked fine (the SDS100 picked it up the best) but all of a sudden I can only get occasional snippets of audio at best. I have it programmed exactly how it's listed in the database (imported using proscan for the 996P2 and Sentinel for the SDS.) I have no problem with any of the other counties around me- they all come in great and I have the proper service types enabled on the SDS. If it helps, both radios show signal but both don't seem to want the lock onto a control channel. Any help would be appreciated- this was working recently and it's driving me nuts.
Sudden issues receiving St Mary's County
- Thread starter scottymcneill8657
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First, make sure all system frequencies are loaded into your programming. That would protect you from the control channel rolling to an unexpected frequency. It is possible that a tower site has gone offline for some reason. In that case, you will probably need to wait until it is restored altough STMC's system has had (or maybe still does) coverage issues and is adversely affected by simulcast distortion. Interesting to note that several state police radios on the system have seemingly lost the STMC control channel, and tried to register with AACo's new system - perhaps the system is having issues. If you have SDR# and an SDR, you could scan the spectrum and observe what control channel is in use, or if it is rolling.
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Unfortunately I don’t have access to a SDR so that’s out for me. It does appear to be some kind of issue on their end; I’ve checked and I have all of the listed freqs/talk groups loaded and if I hold on any of the frequencies all I get is constant static (normally I should have gotten some form of system info when I find the currently active control channel.) Thank you for the advice and hopefully this gets resolved soon.
Came thru ST Marys at 5 last night and had no issues
If you post your programming file, somebody here can check it.
I noticed last night that my SDS100 seemed to clip audio a bit. I also run SDRTrunk with an Airspy mini with a dedicated yagi pointed towards the California site, and it didnt have any audio issues.
For reference, I live in Great Mills, equidistant between the California and Valley Lee sites. I also have a cell tower very close, which drove the yagi\SDR setup. Normally my SDS100 handles this fine.
I have an older RTL-SDR stick running Unitrunker just to log traffic on that system, I will go check it in a bit and see if that indicates any wonky-ness with the system. Will also pay attention when I am out running around with the 100 and see if anything changes as I move.
For reference, I live in Great Mills, equidistant between the California and Valley Lee sites. I also have a cell tower very close, which drove the yagi\SDR setup. Normally my SDS100 handles this fine.
I have an older RTL-SDR stick running Unitrunker just to log traffic on that system, I will go check it in a bit and see if that indicates any wonky-ness with the system. Will also pay attention when I am out running around with the 100 and see if anything changes as I move.
Tried again this morning and seems to work fine now..... (Didn't change anything in my radio.) Admittedly I'm kinda far away from most of the towers but when I was trying originally I tried driving from Charlotte Hall to the Hollywood Fire Dept and had no luck. Oh well- I'm just glad its working again.
Could have been transient interference, weird atmospherics, or simply a system issue. Glad it's working again for you.
I went down to Huntington to test the reach of AACo's P25 coverage. STMC's system is weak in that area, although I could receive the system if my SDS100 was taken out of the cupholder, lol. Note that the current control channel for STMC is 851.1625, while AACo's control channel is 851.1375, only .025 difference and of similar power (AACo's is slightly stronger) in the Huntington area. Perhaps the SDS100 has issues with selectivity with frequencies of roughly equal (but weak) power spaced closely together.
Larry1275
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all is fine in Leonardtown useing SDS-200 and G5 Pager..
I have to say the same when I was down last week doing a ride along with an officer in my agency, I had no issues listening the whole day on my SDS-100
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