Why not...i've got a quiet saturday to tinker..
OP being a troll or not, it got met thinking. I"ve been having a lot of problems decoding Illinois Starcom21, a P25 system. I have the issue of simulcast interference, I think. I've got a lot of antennas, but NONE of my 'better' antennas will give me reliable reception on my 996 on this band. The tower I listen to is a 700 mhz CC and I am wanting to receive Plainfield PD, one of the very few municipalities on this Starcom network.
So, this weekend, I pulled out the (never been used) telescoping cheapo stock antenna that came w/ the 996. To date, this is the ONLY antenna so far that reliably will receive what I want to hear. I have it tilted back about 30 degrees from vertical, it's only extended about 4 inches from the fully collapsed position, and I have the attenuator for this site on and oddly enough it is working halfway decently. This configuration was a result of a LOT of trial and error.
I have to believe that the signal was overloading the receiver. The signal on this tower, according to the signal meter anyway, oscillates from nothing to 3/2/1 bars and back and forth with a 'good antenna', but not in a uniform pattern. That's pretty odd. With my cheapie antenna and the attenuator on, I have either NO bars or 1 bar of signal per the meter, but pretty reliable reception.
I also listen to Joliet PD on the same radio, and now with this antenna setup, I get a pretty lousy but usable reception. That is a traditional MOT 800mhz trunk system. I can't hear ANYTHING else for the most part with this rig, but I can hear what I like to listen to the most. My other scanner I can use at 60+ miles with my Sputnik on a tripod indoors setup when I want to hear Chicago or Kankakee, Bolingbrook, etc. Most of my listening is done at night with headphones, so running multiple scanners at the same time is sort of unrealistic and I can accept the tradeoff for the benefit of hearing what I bought this radio specifically for.
My takeaway: Do what works and don't discount the things that shouldn't work without trying them.
Cheers,
Eric