BC72XLT Scanner acting weird

[RyanLaP]

Hello everybody I just got my scanner yesterday and for some reason when I listened to the scanner and the people on the Jefferson City Sub dispatcher I don't hear two way conversation. ex: (Jefferson City Sub  dispatcher over yeah I'll pick up the load at Maplewood over Dispatcher out). I always get that but I don't hear the other person telling him/her what to do, and I don't hear the UP detector telling all the data. If you guys know how to fix that please tell me. Thank you and happy railroading.

 

                                                                                                        sincerely

                                                                                                   Ryan LaPlaca

[videomaker]

 RyanLaP,

Railroad freqs are very narrow,you may be too far from the train to hear their conversation..Im the same way,unless  a train crew or MOW people are nearly right on top of my location(say w/in a mile) I cant hear them either..If you have an outside anntena, that would help the most,and have it at least 10 ft above your roof...All I have is the little screw in antenna that came w/the scanner... 

Hope this helps and happy listening !  

[RyanLaP]

I never knew that thank you so very much for telling me that I thought I had a bad scanner.

[desertdog]

There are a few possible reasons why you aren't hearing both sides of the conversation. 

For any given amount of output power, antenna height is everything when it comes to VHF radio transmission and reception. First of all, the dispatchers broadcast off a tower that is maybe 40' or more off the ground.  The engineer or conductor is using either a radio in the locomotive with a roof-mounted antenna or they are speaking into a handheld radio that is 4-5 feet off the ground.  Only if you are in fairly close proximity to the train will you be able to hear their response to the dispatcher, although a good, external antenna that is high enough above the surrounding terrain will increase your chances of hearing both sides of the conversation.

Ditto for defect detectors.  Their antennas are deliberately close to the ground and they broadcast at low power so as not disrupt other radio transmissions up and down the line.

A third possibility is that the transmit and receive frequencies are different.  You may have noticed signs along the right-of-way that read, for example,  "96-96." That means that crews receive and transmit on AAR channel 96.  If the two numbers are different, so are the receive and transmit frequencies.

John Timm

 

 

[tree68]

Yep - antennas are everything for scanning.  Even the best scanner in the world won't do you any good without a decent antenna.

Sounds like you may already have the frequencies for your area - either that or you got very lucky.  If you don't have the frequencies (or even if you do), search the web for "your area" +scanner or +frequencies.  Odds are someone has already done the research and has them nicely listed for you.  You might even discover something interesting you hadn't known was there.  Listening to the local fast food drivethrough could get boring in a hurry, but you might find other things to pique your interest between trains.

The "your area" part of the search field could be your city or town, your county, or even your state.  Different resources come up different ways.