GRE PSR-300 Scanner Signal Strength Meter
One of the features I really like with the new GRE PSR-300 scanner that I’ve been testing is the signal strength meter. On the display there is a big S when your receiving a transmission followed by 0-5 bars to indicate signal strength. Why is this such a good thing. Well for starters it makes comparing antennas easier. Frequencies that you’re used to seeing one or two bars on you will be able to compare a second antenna and see if you get 2 or 3 bars or the same 1 or 2 bars of signal strength. I’ve already used this to compare two rubber ducky style stock antennas and concluded they were about the same. Subjective listening comparison is just not quite the same. maybe there’s more static but a louder signal on one or the other. It can be very subjective. Of course, 5 bars isn’t a perfectly well tuned and calibrated way to measure, there can still be subtle differences that aren’t picked up on a 5 bar scale. There is another VERY useful reason that I’m glad this is a feature though.
Interference. I’ve had a source of rf interference in the house that with the old scanner I just couldn’t pinpoint. I was able to approximate which room the interference was coming from, but even by moving the radio in and out closer to the objects I suspect were the culprits I still couldn’t pin down what the interference was coming from.
I suspected the fuse/breaker box since every electric wire in the house passes through. That didn’t seem to give the highest readings, the desktop, the server, the laptop…. nothing really seemed to be THE answer. With the S meter though I figured it out.
I have 2 linksys wrt54gl routers (with dd-wrt firmware installed.) One acts as a router and wireless access point in the attic. The other acts as an openvpn host in the room right next to the computers/server/fuse box. It turns out that the thing is putting out RF around 146mHz for a short range. (The span of a room or two in the house.) It may be more broadband though because it seems to open or break squelch on several scanner frequencies throughout the VHF spectrum and even in some of the lower frequencies when the scanner is in the same room.
I picked 146mHz out because that’s close to one of the local repeater frequencies and that squelch ALWAYS breaks when I’m near that dd-wrt linksys router. I’m sorry to find out those boxes are so noisy RF wise. I depend on that one for my vpn link when I’m away from the house, but I may have to go back to my previous method for remote vpn access. I’m not quite sure what to do with the attic device given that wireless has become somewhat of a necessity at the house for my work now.
Anyway, IF you had a directional antenna you could make use of the S meter to even more precisely pinpoint interference or transmission sources. I can think of quite a few good uses for that… most of them though do revolve around identifying interference which in regards to radio listening has been my number one annoyance from shortwave now up into VHF and UHF.
Related Websites - Using Diversification in the Stock Market Why is it that some people only buy one or two stocks? Others may have 15 stocks but have 50 percent of their investment assets in just one of those 15 stocks. In Wall Street we refer to this type of behavior as concentration. Some firms call it over-concentration.......
- Using Multiple Timeframes To improve the efficiency of our trading strategy. We see the major Trend using a higher time frame than what we intend to use & a lower Time frame to enter a trade. Say we want to trade using the Daily Charts. We take the Weekly charts to see......
- Make Money Investing In layman’s terms, a penny stock is simply a common stock that trades for less that per share and typically is traded on the ‘over the counter’ stock market (OTC) — outside of the major stock exchanges such as the NYSE or NASDAQ. And, true to their name, a......
