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| Reviews Summary for PAR SCANNER INTERMOD FILTERS |
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Reviews: 22
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Average rating: 5.0/5
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MSRP: $74 USD
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Description: These scanner filters are used to eliminate interference from high powered pagers and channel "skipping" from other frequencies. The filters are designed to eliminate specific offending frequencies.
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Product is in production.
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More info: http://www.grove-ent.com/filters.html
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write your own review of the PAR SCANNER INTERMOD FILTERS.
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850MIKE
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Rating: 5/5
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Jan 17, 2012 17:35
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SPOT-ON!!
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Time owned: more than 12 months
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Combine the technical ability of this filter with the customer service of Par Electronics and you have a combination that is hard to find these days.
After having my Uniden scanner's front end on VHF get trashed by two nearby FM broadcast stations when connected to my rooftop discone, Dale Parfitt from Par Electronics was able to custom tune this filter for deep fades right on the offending frequencies! The difference was literally night and day. My distant aircraft signals began bounding in like I'd never heard them before.
Par Electronics was fast with getting the filter built, and sent to me, and the price was very reasonable.
Recently I have gotten into DSTAR amateur radio. I connected my DVAP dongle (which serves as a mini- low-power simplex repeater) to the discone to see what sort of "neighborhood" range I'd get out of my DVAP. I was thrilled to discover I could hear with the HT my DVAP easily 2 miles from my home QTH, despite very low TX power, but disappointed to find that the DVAP was essentially "deaf" due to the same RF overload that plagued my scanner. The noise floor would go from -110dBm to -90dBm when I connected the DVAP to the discone. I simply couldn't get back into my DVAP unless I was within a few blocks of the house. I remembered the custom filter from Par Electronics that I had. I emailed customer support late on a Friday to find out if it the device handle low TX power. I fully expected it'd be Monday before I had even the slightest chance of a reply. I heard from Dale within 45 minutes where he confirmed power <500mW should be ok to transmit through the filter so long as I check return loss/insertion loss on the TX frequency. I confirmed no problems transmitting through the filter and the PROBLEM WAS SOLVED! Noise floor improved by 10dB when using the filter (from around -90 to around -100). My DVAP began hearing me everywhere I could hear it!
I'm a fan!
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NEONDESERT
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Rating: 5/5
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Jul 18, 2011 20:34
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VHF-FM Filter = Fantastic!
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Living in the shadows of several high power FM stations in Las Vegas I was experiencing severe intermod and desense on my BCT15X. The airband was affected the most. One station 106.5Mhz was so bad you could listen to it clearly at times in the airband!
My first attempt to solve this problem was the purchase of an FM trap from Scannermaster. This filter worked OK but only to a point. Even with the filter, 106.5 would still break through at times. That's when I turned to Dale at Par Electronics. Excellent customer service! All questions were answered in less than 24hours. He even went as far as to set up a filter with the highest notch on 106.5Mhz and e-mailed me a sweep to review.
All I can say is, Wow! What a difference! Intermod/desense completely cured. I have my airband back! :)
I highly recommend Dale and Par Electronics!
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KD4NVS
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Rating: 5/5
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Apr 22, 2011 16:57
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Excellent!
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Ordered this filter because NWS put a new TX 2 miles from my house & was having awful intermod issues. I purchased this based on things I read on radioreference.com and through Grove Enterprises / MT. When I installed it, it worked great, but after about 2hrs, I noticed some signals were not quite right & removed the filter, and they came back. I emailed Grove thinking maybe it was just a fluke & he fwd to PAR. PAR was able to replicate my issue & made a tweak to the design & sent me a new one!!! Can you believe that? I really cannot put into words how much I recommend both Grove & PAR!!! These two companies remember what customer service is & and practice it.
This filter works great!!! I'm able to up the squelch to bring in the dx VHF Hi that was overrun by WX...
To quote myself from a few days ago, "hate to be rude, but it's time to do some scanning :)"
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KB3KLQ
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Rating: 5/5
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Mar 23, 2011 08:08
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New Life for my Pro-197!!!
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Here's a copy of the email I sent to Dale about the FM Notch filter:
"Dale,
Received the FM Notch last night, Dale...WOW! Like having a new radio! I have the Pro-197, which is (I'm sure you know) notorious for its sensitive front end. This radio was DEAF on the VHF airband and railroad band. Now I get non-stop activity. I'm in Chattanooga, which is a major rail hub, and the band has really come alive. We're also on the Tennessee River, so I KNEW there was tugboat activity I was missing. Sure enough, I'm hearing traffic there too. Not much, but then again, I've NEVER heard marine activity on this radio before.
Great product! Well worth the price! Thanks, Dale!"
As an FYI, the scanner is connected to a Diamond X50A
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VK5FMLB
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Rating: 5/5
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Aug 28, 2010 16:30
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Excellent filter for removing pager interference
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I recently installed a high gain dual band (2m / 70cm) base antenna for my scanners at home. The antenna works brilliantly, significantly improving the reception on VHF and UHF over the Discone that I had previously used.
Unfortunately due to my proximity to a number of high powered commercial paging sites I was suffering severe de-sensitisation on the VHF frequencies between 140mhz and 160mhz.
After some investigation I ordered a VHFSYM HT M/F BNC filter tuned to 148.5mhz
I can report that it works perfectly.
All of the paging noise on the 2m amateur frequencies has been removed and I can now hear a lot of the repeaters that were swamped with noise without the filter.
Dale is excellent to deal with and for $100 delivered this piece of equipment is one of the best things I have purchased recently.
I can definitely recommend this product.
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W2GLD
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 20, 2010 12:36
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Filters Work - Use Them
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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I've been involved in the hobby for many years and have been resistant against introducing any additional connection points in my antenna system that I didn't need. Well I am here today to say that I am dead wrong!
I have used scanners from all sorts of manufacturers including GRE, Radio Shack, and Uniden to name a few. My current setup is a (2) GRE PSR-600's & (2) Uniden BDC996XT's connected to a Stridesburg multicoupler and a Diamond discone antenna mounted in the attic.
Located less than 13 miles outside of Philadelphia, PA; I reside in a VERY RF SENSITIVE area. There are FM broadcast transmitters and NOAA sites nearby as well as countless local, state, and federal transmitters. NOT a very RF friendly environment for scanners, especially those GRE models, useless without these filters.
To make a long store short, I have encountered various reception issues within the VHF/UHF bands and found that the local FM broadcast stations were one main cause. I immediately order the VHF-FM filter and placed it in-line and all I can say is WOW... For those of you who have the GRE PSR series scanners, this filter is a MUST. You can actually use VHF now without the need for the ATT to be one. All in all, this is by far the best $83 I have ever spent on my receiving station.
The service is excellent from this company, the communications with the owner are superb via e-mail. I recommend any serious listen to purchase at least the VHF-FM filter if your are located in a major metropolis such as Philadelphia.
I give this product, the company, and the support staff *****(5-Stars)
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F6GYY
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Rating: 5/5
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Jan 12, 2010 10:54
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Simply great
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Problem : severe intermodulation from 3 FM transmitters of 50 KW , about 4 km away...
Set-up : collinear 2m / 70 cm with TGN LN preamplifier 50-1500 MHz with 20dB
on the roof... + PAR-Filter with Icom receiver IC-8500 at the station....
=> no internodulation at all ...on the 4 m band ....from 80 - 87.5 MHz by continious scanning
over 3 hours....( squelch and s-meter down.... ) ...Music has also gone on the higher VHF and on UHF....
Small and efficient little filters of high quality, which finally solved the problem..
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PA3GTS
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Rating: 5/5
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Oct 20, 2009 06:07
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Ideal no problems more in the airband
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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Hello every day problems here with the local radio on 104.7 mhz in the airband vhf, i ordered a fm filter from Dale and in our e-mail contact he asked to give the freq and later received the filter and works great no problem more on my scanner,also the communication with Dale was also perfect !
With friendly greetings from Jelle pa3gts 7s s !
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K8CMI
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Rating: 5/5
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Jun 25, 2009 06:14
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Now I'll keep my scanner
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Time owned: 3 to 6 months
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I was ready to just sell the scanners and give up. I have an FM broadcast antenna located about 2 miles from my house. Their signal was on every vhf channel I scanned. The frontend of the scanner was so overloaded that I had to attenuate everything, including NOAA, just to receive anything.
I found Dale's filters on eHam and gave it a try. The offending signal are GONE! The attenuation is off and I now receive signals that I had previously given up on.
Dale is great to work with. He actually RESPONDS to his emails. Usually within the hour. My offender was at 104.9. Out of the box, the filter has a pretty deep notch near this frequency. Dale offered to tune the filter to put a notch right at 104.9. That's customer service.
Thanks Dale!
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W6LBV
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Rating: 5/5
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Apr 13, 2008 21:47
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A (grief) filter that works
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Time owned: 0 to 3 months
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The Par VHF-FM Notch Filter solved a real and vexing problem for me. The FCC, in its customary institutional laxity, approved license upgrades for two local FM broadcast radio stations that took each of them upwards in power to 50 kilowatts ERP! The transmit antennas for these stations, whose broadcasts are of no interest to me anyway, are located within a metropolitan residential area on a tower that lies just over four miles away in a direct line of sight from my residence. At my dwelling, using a broadband discone receiving antenna located in the clear ten feet above ground and a spectrum analyzer, I measured received signal levels from each station of -16 dBm. When that signal level is developed across a 75 ohm receiver input, it yields more than 43,000 microvolts! (Typically, “S-9" is taken to be 50 microvolts.) These two are the strongest measured off-premises signals at my residence between 0 and 1,000 MHz, and probably in the entire RF spectrum. Few, if any, broadband receiver front ends are going to handle a signal of that magnitude without folding into compression.
That grossly excessive signal level is really needed only for receiving broadcasts on electric toothbrushes! There is no rational purpose in using this great a power level in my area, since VHF signals are always blocked by existing terrain before they can decrease to the noise level at far distances. It’s no wonder that my sensitive monitoring receivers on outdoor antennas curl up and die whenever they are tuned to within a few tens of Mhz of the FM broadcast band. The Par filter, working ahead of a broadband distribution amplifier and the receivers, solved the problem. The receiver blanketing is essentially gone!
On-air testing of the filter using the spectrum analyzer confirmed the published specifications. My several monitoring receivers (30 kHz to 2 Ghz) also expressed their relief at no longer having to work under that crushing load!
There are some (small) niggles with the filter: it would be helpful to have multiple tuneable traps in one filter, since I have two 50 kW FM loudmouths to silence (and two more at the same power level just another mile farther away). And, as expressed by others previously, the filter needs some sort of physical mounting tab arrangement so that it can be permanently fastened to a chassis or rack panel (but industrial Velcro will also work).
The filter is somewhat pricey, but it does the job very effectively and significantly better than most competing products. Dale Parfitt is splendid to work with, as he always has been.
For many years I unquestioningly believed that “bigger outdoor antennas were better antennas.” Finally I measured actual received signal levels. And I discovered that the real problem was far too much RF in the air over my residence, not too little!
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