New scanner - Which one?

[paulears]

This has been a really useful topic. I had a TRX2 and sold it at a loss because it was without doubt the least well designed radio I have ever had - a simply terrible heirachical menus system and no way to easily enter a discovered frequency in the memory without loads of button pressing. I shall investigate the 3600 - thanks.

[paulears]

Does the iphone 13 do NXDN? probably not much use otherwise?

[Metradio]

Not much NXDN in the UK, makes up only @ 5% of all digital traffic.

Mike

[jhampton2000]

Not much NXDN in the UK, makes up only @ 5% of all digital traffic.

Agree with that in general Mike, the exception being anything motorsport related which is more like 90% NXDN, 5% DMR and 5% analogue now.

[dc260]

Whilst not strictly a scanner, I would take serious consideration into researching the Baofeng DM-1801.
I bought mine for £68 currently they are around £80 but they can be found cheaper if you wait for more to come in stock.

This is a Dual band DMR/FM transceiver that can be flashed with custom firmware known as the OPENGD77.

This custom firmware provides full monitor (Promiscious) mode to the radio, allowing you to simply tune to a DMR signal in VFO mode and decode it without knowing the colour code or talkgroup.

It uses the same internal circuitry as the GD77 radio and thus has a fast scan speed which is not the case on other Baofeng radios. I can scan over one hundred channels in a few seconds which would take almost a minute on a normal Baofeng radio.

The opengd77 firmware also contains many more features including a bandscope view in which you can have a panadapter-like display of the spectrum to find signals more easily.

Has all of the usual features of a handheld DMR transceiver (Zones, talkgroup naming ect ) and is more sensitive than the RDA-chipped series baofeng radios and does not suffer from nearly as much overload. Uses the AT1846S chip internally.

The most exciting thing about the firmware is that it is open source, this means with knowledge of C you can implement your own unique features to the radio and it is always being constantly developed and tweaker. An issue that is present with a lot of DMR radios is they often lack regular updates to the firmware, since this firmware is run by radio hobbyists bugs are always ironed out as long as the radio itself remains popular.

I am honestly astonished that this radio whilst not strictly a receive-only scanner has features that are only avaliable on expensive DMR radios as well as the whistler TRX-1 but at a fraction of a price. (Well perhaps not all, you only have DMR as the digital receive unlike the Whistler that does provide NXDN/ D-star/ Fusion ect yet again NXDN is rarely used compared to DMR at least here in the UK...)

I use it as my main receive radio for commerical DMR and Analog signals and I am honestly astonished as to why this radio is not as popular amonst the scanning fraternity.

If anyone has any questions about it, please feel free to ask.

[Metradio]

Whilst not strictly a scanner, I would take serious consideration into researching the Baofeng DM-1801.....

.....If anyone has any questions about it, please feel free to ask.

How does it deal with RAS (Restricted Access to System) ?
https://cwh050.blogspot.com/2015/10/res ... ystem.html

Mike

[Metradio]

Not much NXDN in the UK, makes up only @ 5% of all digital traffic.

Agree with that in general Mike, the exception being anything motorsport related which is more like 90% NXDN, 5% DMR and 5% analogue now.

I would go along with that.. The other users of NXDN tend to be bus companies and owners of the old analogue Community Repeater systems, they had some good deals from Kenwood dealers..

Did you know that NXDN radios have a build in digital scrambling system as their basic privacy ? The AOR DV1 and DV10 are able to automatically search for the key on scrambled systems and when found can display the key and pass the unscrambled audio within 2 seconds.

Mike

[jhampton2000]

Thanks for that. Yes, I understand that the tweaks needed to the DSP in MotoTRBO radios for the high noise environment were a bit of a pain to work with, but Kenwood's were quite the opposite which has driven this trend. The NXDN descrambler is perhaps the single redeeming feature of the DV10. Such as shame it is NXDN4800 only and not NXDN9600 as well. Never quite understood that, even when an Icom receiver does both.

[Metradio]

Thanks for that. Yes, I understand that the tweaks needed to the DSP in MotoTRBO radios for the high noise environment were a bit of a pain to work with, but Kenwood's were quite the opposite which has driven this trend. The NXDN descrambler is perhaps the single redeeming feature of the DV10. Such as shame it is NXDN4800 only and not NXDN9600 as well. Never quite understood that, even when an Icom receiver does both.

AOR are citing a hardware limitation for the lack of NXDN9600 even on the newish 5700d, strange as all the other current digital scanners with NXDN can do 4800 and 9600..

Mike

[paulears]

I’ve been looking at the business radio I can hear from my office. What analogue there is is spasmodic and mainly smaller light use operators. Lots of digital. A few trunked systems but lots of other stuff and NXDN96 is half of it. It certainly isn’ rare here. North east Suffolk. I’ve just ordered a uniden 3600 scanner. Buying a scanner is so hard. There’s a YouTube dealer video that quickly mentions the modes the icom R-30 can do, which included DMR but then a YouTube alternate video says it doesn’t do it well, and can’t do trunking? The YouTube videos are pretty dreadful. One done by a guy who clearly hasn’t a clue and didn’t even edit out where he made mistakes. Not a single video on the practical aspects that would help people. The us system where they seem to use the database for everything fails here with so many people using hire channels or the light licences, so their details don’t appear in the UK WTR. I wanted to set a band lower and upper limit and search. It says it does it, but not one video that shows it finding signals this way! It’s very odd.

[Metradio]

I have both the 3600 and the TRX1 but find the 3600 programming difficult to get my head around..
To the West of London I have found very little NXDN, the largest users are a golf club/hotel and a replacement for a Community Repeater who's only scrambled user is a skip hire firm complete with swearing drivers

Mike

[Metradio]

Whilst not strictly a scanner, I would take serious consideration into researching the Baofeng DM-1801.....

.....If anyone has any questions about it, please feel free to ask.

How does it deal with RAS (Restricted Access to System) ?
https://cwh050.blogspot.com/2015/10/res ... ystem.html

Mike

Hello dc260 are you still here ?

Mike

[dc260]

Whilst not strictly a scanner, I would take serious consideration into researching the Baofeng DM-1801.....

.....If anyone has any questions about it, please feel free to ask.

How does it deal with RAS (Restricted Access to System) ?
https://cwh050.blogspot.com/2015/10/res ... ystem.html

Mike

Sorry for the late reply, it slipped my mind.

I have yet to try decoding a RAS signal with it so I am afraid I can't give you detailed information, Sorry. (There are no RAS enabled systems where I live in Yorkshire, however it is a shame since just a few months ago, Leeds festival employed a VHF DMR RAS system which I could receive on DSD which was unfortunately before I bought the radio).

However what I do know is that the OPENGD77 firmware uses the same DMR receiving code as DSD, at least it is based on the same code, and that system DOES decode RAS successfully.

From my research into RAS it seems to implement an extra header into each voice frame which makes a non RAS enabled radio fail the CRC error check which results in no audio coming through on the set.

If it does not decode RAS transmissions it could be aleviated with editing the firmware. With some C code it should be relatively trivial to skip the check on a RAS enabled system, however I have limited knowledge in pure C (I work with C# mostly) so it may be some time before I could test this...

Yet again I am sorry for not giving you a definitive answer, if there was a RAS enabled system in my area I would be able to check but there isn't...

DC260 Danielle.

[Metradio]

Thanks for replying..
RAS is normally found when the owner of a cheap DMR tranceiver is given the Colour Code, Slot and Talkgroup info by a scanner user, he enters the info but receives no audio but notices the busy light flashing from time to time. He checks the info again with the scanner user and the scanner user demonstrates the system working OK - but still does not work on the transceiver...
Quite a few on here have found out their cheap DMR transceiver they purchased to monitor their local shop watch does not work - but all the DMR capable scanners receive it no problem.
RAS is implemented on a number of Motorola shop watch and pub watch systems, not to stop evesdropping but to prevent "extra" mobiles being added to the systems by individuals..
Rule of thumb, scanners only fail on encrypted DMR, transceivers also fail on RAS..

Another question, how does the DM-1801 deal with listening to Tier III single site with Talkgroups that can use both Time Slots ? I am sure you have a few of those..

Mike

[Metradio]

Whilst not strictly a scanner, I would take serious consideration into researching the Baofeng DM-1801.....
.....If anyone has any questions about it, please feel free to ask.

Don't let this question slip your mind as well....

"Another question, how does the DM-1801 deal with listening to Tier III single site with Talkgroups that can use both Time Slots ? I am sure you have a few of those.."

Mike