scanSydney

Hi all.

Strange problem, and I'm not sure if it's my radio or the networks (highly doubting this).

I've been doing lots of trips to the Snowy Mountains over the last few months, and have found FRNSW PMR 801-804 (Cooma/Jindabyne/Thredbo/Perisher), and Snowy River RFS are coming through the radio with a regular pulse (say, every 0.5 seconds) which causes the radio to momentarily cut out (probably for about 0.25 seconds) making listening to these channels virtually impossible.

I find that if I open the squelch, the pulse stops. So I'm assuming it's something directly wrong with the radio and its automatic squelch.

Strange part is, once I get back to Goulburn/Sydney, etc., all RFS channels and CB channels now sound fine with no pulse or anything out of the ordinary making it extremely difficult to isolate the problem with the radio. Are these channels down there using some strange type of network which my radio goes crazy over or what? I'm completely lost as I can't replicate this problem in Sydney.

It has happened everytime I've gone to the Snowies. I keep forgetting to take a handheld to see if it is just the car or not! Must remember this next time!

Anyone have any ideas?

Cheers.

Just a thought... most, if not all my frequencies stored in Sydney range between 460MHz and 470MHz, whereas all in the Snowies are 413MHz-420MHz. Could the antenna be possibly not as receptive in the lower 400's compared to the mid to high 400's? I still don't see the antenna being an issue given the audio is clear when the squelch is manually fully opened...

I would've thought it unlikely that two different agencies are both employing the same strange type of network?

I know this is a silly question but are you using a different scan list when travelling, perhaps a "Priority Scan" that keeps checking ch40 or something crazy like that?

Andrew

It's definitely not a priority scan. It seems the priority scan only operates with the radio is set to 'group scan' mode, but it's set to 'open scan' which apparently means it won't check the channel. Very strange!

ill probably be down that way in the next couple of weeks, ill check it out.
i know the Monaro RFS audio is woeful, waaaayyy to quiet.
cheers
Matt

Hi all,

I have done a couple of trips thru the Monaro region and havnt had any issues with the audio that you mention. my radio just votes as it should between RFS channels and the audio is ok(channels are pretty dead right now). the FRNSW PMR audio at Cooma sounds ok too (probably a little quiet).

cheers
Matt

Ah, thanks so much for checking that out. I definitely have no idea what was causing this problem considering it's working fine in Sydney... will be remaining a mystery for a while!

Could this be related to the network heartbeat pulses? Not sure, but the FRNSW pulses are transmitted every 60 seconds down the Monaro. How long does the scanner dwell for when it receives a carrier while scanning?

Richard

ivahri wrote:Could this be related to the network heartbeat pulses? Not sure, but the FRNSW pulses are transmitted every 60 seconds down the Monaro. How long does the scanner dwell for when it receives a carrier while scanning?

This is the thing though, even during heartbeat, it still cuts out frequently while it's open! It usually dwells for 2-3 sec.