BCD436HP/BCD536HP: Uniden BCD463HP Austin

[johnthequack]

Hello,

I am new to police scanning and I bought a Uniden BCD463HP. I think the issues I am running into involve simulcast but I’m not sure. I can see so many channels.. but the scan never lands on them. Whenever it does land on a channel it’s never for long and has a broken transmission. Most of the time it’s just quiet. I can see the frequency strength bars, but I can’t get the audio to be close to consistent if at all. Whenever I hold it on a channel that I can see frequency many times I will never hear anything. Any help would be much appreciated. Before anyone asks, close call and priority are not on. Thank you.

 

[dave3825]

Post a link to the system and site your monitoring.

 

[johnthequack]

Post a link to the system and site your monitoring.

Literally almost any channel on the GATRRS. Ranging from any of the fire dispatches to police to Austin criminal to Austin narcotics.

Travis County, Texas (TX) Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference

Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference for Travis County, Texas (TX)

www.radioreference.com

 

[hiegtx]

Hello,

I am new to police scanning and I bought a Uniden BCD463HP. I think the issues I am running into involve simulcast but I’m not sure. I can see so many channels.. but the scan never lands on them. Whenever it does land on a channel it’s never for long and has a broken transmission. Most of the time it’s just quiet. I can see the frequency strength bars, but I can’t get the audio to be close to consistent if at all. Whenever I hold it on a channel that I can see frequency many times I will never hear anything. Any help would be much appreciated. Before anyone asks, close call and priority are not on. Thank you.

See my answer to your same question down in the Texas forum.

Problem receiving on Uniden BCD436HP in Austin area.

Having a problem receiving any transmissions in the Austin area (GATRRS) Up until a week or so ago I had no problem monitoring Austin PD, Austin FD, Austin Travis Co EMS and Travis County Sheriff, now I am getting almost no transmissions. I do occasionally receive the AFD county dispatch channel...

forums.radioreference.com

Unfortunately, as noted in this thread in the Texas Forum, Austin & Travis County appear to be starting to switch to encrypted talkgroups, which would negate any scanner's ability to receive them.

Austin Police - Encryption

Austin PD has begun rolling out fully encrypted dispatch talkgroups running patched to the legacy groups currently. Units are reported to be in the process of switching over to the new talkgroups with a goal of full cutover by the end of the summer. Another big blow for government transparency...

forums.radioreference.com

Post a link to the system and site your monitoring.

Dave, the system in question is Simulcast Site 7 on the GATRRS system, which includes the Austin area among a number of other counties.

 

[dave3825]

Dave, the system in question is Simulcast Site 7 on the GATRRS system, which includes the Austin area among a number of other counties.

I had not seen his other post at that point. Lol

 

[Ensnared]

Check digital hold time, Favorite level. I set my 436HP and SDS 100 on 1 second.

 

[Ubbe]

Check digital hold time, Favorite level. I set my 436HP and SDS 100 on 1 second.

Where can that be found? If you ment Hold time then the scanner are always using a minimum of 1,5sec even if you set 1sec. Choosing 0sec will set the deafult 2sec as the Hold time. But the OP wrote "Whenever I hold it on a channel that I can see frequency many times I will never hear anything" so the Hold time doesn't help when manually holding infinitely on a frequency.

During scan of a problematic trunked simulcast systems and using a scanner like BCD436 it can help to increase the Hold time longer than the default 2 sec to keep it trying longer to decode the control channel data. If it starts to monitor a TG on a voice channel then it is the delay for that TG that could help if its delay are longer than the default 2 sec, to give it more time to recover usable data bits and error correct them without the delay timing out and close down the call where it will also go to the next system and will not retry again from the control channel.

/Ubbe