Unication G5 working well on Ore State Radio Project!

[sparklehorse]

Unication made the upgrade to P25 Phase II a free download a few weeks ago. Previously this upgrade required paying a fee and sending your unit in to their service center. Glad I dragged my feet!! The free online upgrade process was pretty straightforward. Their programming software however, is still stuck in the Stone Age. So programming the large OSRP system was quite time consuming. A LOT of cut & paste, and I still haven't done the whole thing. At this point I mostly just have the PDX area, north valley, and gorge programmed. But so far the Phase II OSRP system is working very well on my Unication G5. The actual users of the system, like OSP Salem, or OSP The Dalles, sound really good. Better, I think, than the typical audio you hear on the Portland BOEC P25 system. The patched talkgroups, like Columbia County, McMinnville PD, etc. - these all sound pretty distorted. I think the G5 does better with these than my Uniden 436 or 325P2, but they still sound pretty 'harsh' for lack of a better word. That may just be the way the system is set up. The volume level is also better controlled than on my Unidens, which seem to be all over the place on this system and usually much louder than any other system

From my house I get a good signal from the Skamania Mountain site. On this site I'm hearing OSP The Dalles, OSP Portland, Hood River County Law & Hood River Fire. I don't often get a good VHF signal from that area, so it's kind of interesting to hear such a clear transmission from OSP The Dalles. From the Newberg site I'm hearing Yamhill County, McMinnville PD, Polk County, Marion County, Columbia County, OSP Salem, OSP McMinnville & OSP Portland. Similar results from the Goat Mtn, Pete's Mtn, Wash Co Simulcast & Portland Simulcast sites. In two weeks I'll be doing a road trip to the Camp Sherman area, so it will be interesting to see how the G5 performs on the OSRP system while mobile. I will report back.

Anyway, if there are any G5 owners out there wondering if the upgrade to Phase II is worth it, I say definitely yes!

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[sparklehorse]

Working with this a bit more, I’ve discovered I’m also getting a signal from the Mt Hood OSRP site. Signal strength is only 2 or 3 bars, but that’s good enough for the G5 to produce what sounds like a near-perfect decode. On this site I’m hearing OSP Portland, OSP The Dalles & Hood River County. But also (not too surprisingly) Wasco County Law and the Warm Springs Tribal Police. Both of those agencies’ frequencies have been in my scanners for years, but I’ve only ever received them from Portland a handful of times when conditions were just right. Both patches have relatively decent sounding audio quality, so for me that’s a pretty cool find.

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[ScanRite]

I've been here in Redmond, not too far from Warm Springs. When they switched to their P25 system a couple years back, the signal went to crap. Once in a while, I might hear a unit on the input side. Signal string was 5 bars, but wouldn't decode (neither 536 or DSD). So I've been listening to the Mt Hood site a 100 miles away so I can listen to them.

I recently moved about 5 miles north to Terrebonne and I have been picking them up with just my back of radio telescoping whip. So I think Cinder Butte north of Redmond was blocking my signal, especially with the two different hill tops and load of radio towers.

 

[sparklehorse]

<snip> So I think Cinder Butte north of Redmond was blocking my signal, especially with the two different hill tops and load of radio towers.

That's a good bet. I have not received them at all since they went to P25. Only briefly when they were analog.

I'm a good 50 miles from the Mt Hood OSRP site, and it amazes me the little Unication, with its thimble-size antenna, can make that weak signal sound so good. It's pretty remarkable.

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[ScanRite]

I'm a good 50 miles from the Mt Hood OSRP site, and it amazes me the little Unication, with its thimble-size antenna, can make that weak signal sound so good. It's pretty remarkable.

Yes, that's pretty impressive!

 

[sparklehorse]

Just another little update. From my home here in SW Portland I’ve found the Unication G5 also does impressively well with the SW 7 County P25 system down in Linn County. I had an old 800/900 MHz Yagi lying around, so I set that up on our second story deck, aimed it south, hooked the coax up to the G5, and voila! That Linn County system sounds GREAT! It sounds better than the Portland P25 system. I’m on a 500 foot hill, so that helps, however my view to the south is obstructed by trees and higher hills AND I’m a good 75 miles from Scott Mountain! I’m hearing Linn County SO, Benton Co Law and Albany PD. I tried the Benton County simulcast as well, but the radio is not finding a control channel for that one.

The antenna I’m using is a 13 dBi Yagi I got from ScannerMaster some time ago:

https://www.scannermaster.com/824_960_13dBi_Terrawave_Yagi_Base_Antenna_p/20-541820.htm

Too bad the G5 only scans one system at a time. It would make an awesome scanner if only they added a few features to it.

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[sparklehorse]

Thought I&#8217;d report back on my road trip with the G5. Last weekend I drove from Portland to Clear Lake (which is in Linn County not far from Santiam Junction). I tested the G5 on the OSRP system while on this trip to see if it might replace my BCD325P2 for road trips across the state. Typically to use the 325P2 on the road I connect it to a GPS puck, connect it to a mag mount antenna, and also connect it to my car speakers through the AUX speaker jack. With the Unication G5 I just stick it in a cup holder and go. It also has a screen that&#8217;s easier to read than the 325.
So how did the G5 do? Well, I&#8217;d say the results are mixed at best. The unit itself generally does a good job decoding that system while mobile, but there&#8217;s two problems that make it less than an ideal solution. The first are the various patches of non-state agencies on the OSRP system. They sound pretty horrible - very distorted and hard to listen to. With some you can barely copy anything. So if you want to hear everything going on around you, or out ahead of you, you really still need a second scanner, because the G5 can only scan one system at a time. The other thing is the lack of talkgroup hold. It&#8217;s true you can get around that to some degree with smart programming, but if something is happening out in front of you, let&#8217;s say a wreck on I-5 near Albany, and you&#8217;re passing through Salem headed south, and so you want to hold on OSP Albany. You can only do that if you have only that specific OSP channel AND the appropriate site programmed into what&#8217;s called a &#8220;Knob Position&#8221; (which is essentially a channel, or a specific scan list). With the OSRP system there are just too many combinations of OSP channels, ODOT channels, outside agency patches and transmitter sites to do that effectively for a long road trip. You could actually program it all in, the G5 has the capacity, the problem is that you only have eight of these easily switchable Knob Positions per &#8220;Zone&#8221; (a Zone is sort of like a &#8216;bank&#8217; of 8 channels). You can have many Zones programmed into the radio (each with 8 Knob Positions), but switching between Zones is fiddly and requires too much attention to do safely while driving. Switching between the 8 Knob Positions in one Zone however can be done safely.
So for a short trip, let&#8217;s say Portland to Salem, you could certainly set up the radio with 8 Knob Positions in one Zone that would do a great job of scanning OSP and ODOT, and also have the ability to hold on a few different things that might be of interest. Longer trips are going to require some thoughtful programming, several Zones, and at least some switching between those Zones along the way. You might say, &#8220;Why not program in all the OSRP sites and let the radio pick?&#8221; Well, you absolutely can, and that would cut down the number of Zones, but what I and others have found is that in that scenario the radio tends to grab the first control channel it finds that meets its bare minimum requirements for signal quality, which will not necessarily be the closest tower or the best possible signal. And then it will hang on to that site for as long as it can. It only goes looking for something better if the current signal drops below some quality threshold, and the decode can get pretty sketchy before that happens. And if you have multiple sites programmed in one knob position there is no way to pick from a list of possible sites, lock out certain sites, or force the radio to look for a different site. You are sort of stuck with whatever site it picks. So for this trip I wanted to use transmitter sites of my choosing, so I programmed one Zone with 8 Knob positions, each Knob with only one transmitter site and in Monitor mode (which is like ID Search, or talkgroup wildcard), and decided ahead of time where I would switch from one site to the next based on coverage maps like the one below for the Salem West site that I generated at heywhatsthat.com (If you haven&#8217;t used Hey What&#8217;s That it&#8217;s worth checking out. It&#8217;s a great tool for the radio hobbyist). The programming worked OK, but for next time I would use targeted scan lists instead of Monitor mode because the OSRP sites along I-5 all have a lot of radio traffic, and it&#8217;s not helpful to be stuck listening to the horrible sounding McMinnville PD or Columbia County Sheriff patches while you&#8217;re driving on I-5 through Salem.

Sorry this was kind of rambling. Hopefully there&#8217;s something in there that&#8217;s useful for someone.

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