Sunday, February 2, 2014

BCD436HP Performance on Metro DC Systems

I had a chance to try the BCD436HP on several DC-area trunked systems yesterday. I was in Pentagon City using the Radio Shack 800 MHz antenna. Here are some observations:
  • Alexandria: Good performance.
  • Arlington: Excellent performance. The BCD396XT never had problems with this system from Pentagon City.
  • DC Project 16: Good performance.
  • DC Project 25: Good performance. Interestingly, the scanner did not mute the audio on the encrypted MPD talkgroups. The unit IDs were also displayed.
  • Fairfax P25: Decent performance. I believe it was receiving better than the BCD396XT.
  • Prince George's: Neither the North site nor the South site was receivable. This is not unexpected, however. I don't think the BCD396XT was able to receive Prince George's either.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Did you program the scanner yourself or did you download those sites by entering the zip code?

Thanks for posting your experiences with the new scanner. Look forward to hearing more.

Scott

David Schoenberger said...

I've done both, actually. It's easy to program the scanner either way.