What Happened?!?!?!?!?

[rayveedub]

Recently i noticed that one of my locations that i monitor has began to have alot of static (has never had this problem in over 1 year) in the recordings. (Using Butel Scanner Over IP). I know it cant be a signal issue because i am in baltimore county with a discone running to that scanner, and that is the one with the issue. Not only is it full of static in recordings now but it is also missing entire events that are coming up on my pagers. Last night there was a fire about 15 minutes away from here and i only got the dispatch and not any of the fireground activity which are trunked talkgroups. I have updated the scanner several times very recently (programming through ARC250 ) and have had no luck as to why this started happening. I really want to get rid of the static and have the scanner pick up everything fire related again just like it used to. Here is the hardware breakdown from antenna to my computer that i listen to the recordings from

Discone - lmr400 - multicoupler - bearcat 796d with APCO 2500 Card - Scanner over IP Server CPU - My Network - Scanner over IP Client CPU (where the audio is recorded) - My network - My desktop where I do all my listening from a map drive that records the audio on the Client CPU.
I use BUTEL software only.

Please, any help would be really appreciated as I want to resolve this immediately so i can get back to scanning.

 

[dangitdoug]

I talked to my neighbor, who is is a ham operator. He said there has been a heavy sunspot period the last few days. Nothing you can do but wait it out.

Doug K

 

[rayveedub]

i dont think that is it. I have had the same problem with Anne Arundel county here since i have installed it, and Im hoping that when i figure out what this is i can fix that as well. I always blamed range as the reason that i didnt have clean recordings coming from there. Also maybe i should have asked this first, but what is sun spotting?

 

[rayveedub]

okay after a little bit more trouble shooting, i was able to make everything go back the way it was by launching a system restore in msconfig and reloding a restore point from june. But this just means one thing, it is something software related. That could be anything from BUTEL to Microsoft. I need to figure this out. Now that I know it is software related I am positive I can fix Anne Arundel County as well, which has never worked but this leads me to think it is something i did in the configuration. I did notice something else as well, when i put the scanner "stand alone" there was no static coming through the built in speaker only happened when it was hooked up to my other hardware. I will diagnose Anne Arundel now to see if this happens. Ill update shortly....if anyone cares ;-)

 

[rayveedub]

okay it seems it is not a software problem with anne arundel but some type of physical problem that is preventing it or maybe its bad programming done by myself. I let the scanner run just hooked up to its antenna only and it the static remains. There is definately more static than the Baltimore County scanner had. Any suggestions would be appreciated. And yes i already have a Yagi 9db gain antenna on it.

 

[N4DES]

Is the scanner broken and now has poor sensitivty? Lightning or EMP pulse?
Did you try to hook up another scanner to the same antenna to see if the issue remains?

If it's 800 your trying to listen to, did any new sites go up? NEXTEL interference?

There are a bunch of variables so you will have to do some troubleshooting on your end
to be able to give you some better answers.