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Object Oriented Scanners Overload Issues

From The RadioReference Wiki

The scanners being discussed in this article include the following;

GRE Model Older RS Model Newest RS Model Whistler Model
PSR-3101
PSR-4101
PSR-500 Pro-106 Pro-651 WS1040
PSR-600 Pro-197 Pro-652 WS1065
  1. Trunking w/ Analog Voice Only scanners, others shown in table can handle up-to Digital P25 Phase I
GRE Radio Shack Whistler
PSR-700 Pro-107
Pro-18
PSR-800 Pro-668 WS1080
WS1088
TRX-1
PSR-900 WS1095
WS1098
TRX-2


These scanners have a very sensitive front end

In urban and semi urban environments, or those living in or near areas with numerous FM radio towers, cell towers or places that uses pagers like a hospital, this causes a serious problem with overloading and desense. The cause is likely to be insufficient filtering in the front end, allowing high power FM stations, pagers and so forth to blast into the amplifier (more information on this is needed).

If you are putting up an outside antenna or even something indoors like an attic antenna, a RS800 or other band specific antenna most of any size on these scanners, it's very likely that you will run into this issue. While you can run the Attenuator on the frequencies where you have trouble, a far better approach is to add band appropriate filtering. When adding a filter to your scanner, make the cable run as short as possible to minimize the possibility of stray pickup as well as minimize connectors . The following distributors/manufacturers of filters have been mentioned on RR in the past; please add any others that are found to be helpful.


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