WHICH SCANNER?

[wa6osb]

I live in the San Diego County area and I think the county system currently uses Motorola 3600 mixed analog/digital trunking on 800 MHz.

I also travel and would like a scanner that will follow APCO 25 in the VHF & UHF bands. Narrow splits etc.

Looking to the near(?) future I also want to be able track APCO 25 in the new 700 MHz band and 380-400 MHz band. I hear this 380-400 range may be used for interoperability between the Feds and other Public Safety.

Is there one scanner that will do all this well. :?

Thanks,
Ken

 

[INDY72]

As of yet there is not scanner that will do 700 trunking properly. As for the best that are currently on the market: Radio Shack (GRE) PRO-96, Uniden BC296D, BC796D. Comming soon (we hope) PRO-2096.

 

[KE4ZNR]

You say that you will be traveling alot...the Virtual Folder memory of the Pro 96 might be just the thing for you....I have Virtual Folders for Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Chicago in my Pro 96 that I can use with a few keypresses....

 

[wa6osb]

Thanks for all the feedback guys.

Typically my travels are the I-15 corridor into Montana which I understand will be going to APCO 25 VHF as will Wyoming. This will probably be similar to the Alaska system. I doubt that there will be any virtual folders for the area as the population density is relatively light.

It would be nice if GRE and/or Uniden could cover the new bands that will be coming into use. Hint, hint. You manufacturers listening? :roll:

Ken

 

[wolverine]

Also the Pro-96 is more user friendly when it's come's to monitoring digital systems when compared to it's Uniden counter part. The scanner will virtually set its self up for digital operation, all the end user has to do is program the control channels into the banks.

 

[rdale]

"It would be nice if GRE and/or Uniden could cover the new bands that will be coming into use. Hint, hint. You manufacturers listening?"

Since there's nothing coming soon in the 'new band' department, and it's much more than just opening up the 700 region, there's no reason for companies to add that expense to a scanner yet.

 

[wa6osb]

VHF P25 is already in use in Alaska, and soon to be in parts of Wyoming (if not already) and Montana. There are a couple of 700 systems in Nevada.

I think at least some of that could be handled with software mods.

Ken

 

[kikito]

VHF P25 is already in use in Alaska....

At this time the latest digital Unidens and Pro-96 with the latest updates will let you monitor P25 VHF systems. The Pro-96 might need the Tables set but it trunktracks those systems better than the Unidens once you do.

 

[wa6osb]

Thanks, that's good info.

Ken

 

[INDY72]

700 is being implemented in at least two, maybe three states, VHF APCO-25 is already in use in a several states, railroad SNFM is about to happen, and APCO-25 will be in use there by several railcorps. So I do think that future digital scanners as in circa late 2005 early 2006 will incorporate proper 700, and VHF SNFM.

 

[FPO703]

railroad SNFM is about to happen, and APCO-25 will be in use there by several railcorps.

I know NFM is Narrow FM. and WFM is Wide FM.

What's SNFM?

 

[INDY72]

NFM is the freqs your used to- 155.6250 SNFM is SuperNFM,.. the new narrowband.. -155.1375 Standard FM is like this 99.7.....

If they had NFM for say broadcast radio youd get freqs on your stereo like -99.750... If they had SNFM itd be like -99.7575

 

[N_Jay]

NFM is the freqs your used to- 155.6250 SNFM is SuperNFM,.. the new narrowband.. -155.1375 Standard FM is like this 99.7.....

If they had NFM for say broadcast radio youd get freqs on your stereo like -99.750... If they had SNFM itd be like -99.7575

You are drawing your conclusions too far. :evil:

Wide FM and Narrow FM are technical distictions having to do with the deviation and modulation index.

(At some point given a certain deviation and maximum modulation frequency, the equasions are become different between WFM and NFM.)(Guess modulation theory class was too many years ago!)

Broadcast FM is WFM, Traditional Land Mobile is NFM.

NFM has become shorthand for 25 or 30 kHz channels.
SNFM is a new name given to 12.5 kHz channels.

It does not matter where the channel center frequency is.
You can have a 25 kHz channel od xxx.025 or xxx.0125 (depending on the rules for the particular band and service.

FM Broadcast in the US is 200 kHz channels, and to my knowlege there are no proposals to reduce the channel width.

 

[kikito]

NFM has become shorthand for 25 or 30 kHz channels.
SNFM is a new name given to 12.5 kHz channels.

But on many scanners out there, I think NFM is called FM and SNFM is called NFM.

 

[N_Jay]

NFM has become shorthand for 25 or 30 kHz channels.
SNFM is a new name given to 12.5 kHz channels.

But on many scanners out there, I think NFM is called FM and SNFM is called NFM.

It would be interesting if people would compile how they are refered to by each manufacturer, rather than what they "think" each means.

Yaesu FRG-9600
25kHz is labled FM-N
200 kHz is labled FM-W

 

[INDY72]

On most RS scanners .. its just FM, on a very few its NFM,.. on Unidens they have FM, NFM,.. but there is yet to be one that actually has the SNFM label,.. though the newest scanners except the PRO-83 support the SNFM freqs accurately. With some RS scanners, notably the PRO-95, Win95 software will open it for VHF SNFM. All the rest of the line from the PRO-94 back, the freqs are rounded up or down to fit the NFM freq settings.

 

[kikito]

It would be interesting if people would compile how they are refered to by each manufacturer, rather than what they "think" each means.

I said "I think" because scanners like Uniden and GRE never show or explained stuff like that in their specs like most high-end communication receivers. What I said is from experience and experimentation....

....plus it's been discussed many times before, I was trying to save somebody from the horrible task of searching the archives.

 

[N_Jay]

It would be interesting if people would compile how they are refered to by each manufacturer, rather than what they "think" each means.

I said "I think" because scanners like Uniden and GRE never show or explained stuff like that in their specs like most high-end communication receivers. What I said is from experience and experimentation....

....plus it's been discussed many times before, I was trying to save somebody from the horrible task of searching the archives.

My "Guess" is that unless they demode broadcasty FM, then all they do is standard NFM (25 kHz bandwidth), but may have added extra channels center frequencies to aid in tuning the new splinter and refarmed channels.

Look at the adjacent channel specs to tell if they consider "adjacent channel rejection" to be 25 or 12.5 kHz off the center.

I think th econfusion is that people asociate certain center frequencies with channel widths, but there is no technical association.