[Scan-DC] Problem with Arlington County P25 system on Uniden 346XT

[Mike Agner]

Well there's one really simple answer here - the 346XT can't handle P25 
- it's an analog only scanner. Now if you mean the 396XT, that's a horse 
of 'nother color.....

Be that as it may, that system is simulcast - and if it's using LSM like 
so many systems that are popping up lately, the current crop of digital 
scanners is going to have problems decoding it
well. The wiki at RR has a very detailed article on this very subject

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Simulcast_digital_distortion

This is an issue very familiar to folks wanting to listen to Baltimore 
city or Baltimore county. As an example when I drove up to Woodlawn 
where I used to work, I had to make sure my attenuator
was on, as I was receiving sigs from at least 3 towers at the same time 
(this is on a 396T).  It wasn't real clear all the time, but it worked - 
mostly.

Now there was a firmware upgrade to the 396XT that supposedly improved 
LSM decoding...

http://info.uniden.com/twiki/pub/publish/BCD396XTFirmwareUpdate.html

Be sure to try to use the settings as defined in version 1.-06 first. 
You should know that it's a very catch as catch can type thing. One set 
of settings might work well for one person, not so well for another. 
It's virtually impossible to quantify simply because the RF environment 
can be completely different for each (one might be using his radio 
mobile with a duckie, another with a gain 800 Mhz antenna in a fixed 
location...yada...yada...). You're going to have to fiddle with it a 
lot, and accept the compromise performance.

And then there's this...

http://forums.radioreference.com/uniden-scanners/267424-loose-open-squelch-improves-lsm-simulcast-reception.html

Are there any real solutions? Probably not until the scanner 
manufacturers (now just Uniden, and Whistler now that GRE is out) 
develop new firmware that can properly handle the distortion issue and 
LSM.  And before anyone asks, I have no idea whether the new 436/536 
will handle this either. I suspect that the folks that are lucky enough 
to do beta testing signed NDAs to prevent them from talking about 
technical issues in public.

Not the answer everyone wants to hear, but the only one available, I'm 
afraid...Mike

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