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Reviews For: PAR SCANNER INTERMOD FILTERS

Category: Filters, RF: bandpass, duplexer, lowpass, highpass, RFI/EMI

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Review Summary For : PAR SCANNER INTERMOD FILTERS
Reviews: 41MSRP: 74 USD
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.
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.parelectronics.com/scanner.php
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00415
RINKER Rating: 2003-02-20
This review describes PAR's scanner intermod filters Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
My area of interest with scanners is in listening to railroad communications, specifically in the 160-161MHZ frequency range. The railroads uses a series of repeaters placed along side of the tracks at regular intervals which allow the engines to communicate with the dispatchers at greatly reduced power, thus for me reducing the listening range of a Radio Shack PRO-91 scanner to just a few miles with the conventional rubber duckie antenna or ever radio shacks moderately priced outdoor antenna when listening at home.

To increase my listening range, I bought a tuned 3/4 wave antenna (MAX RAD - $60) and two amplifiers(GRE - $59.95 each).

Once I bought the quality tuned antenna and amplifiers for my scanner, along with the increase in listening range came all sorts of interference. In certain areas while traveling, the scanner became almost useless due to the constant interference.

In comes the PAR scanner intermod filter. The filters are designed to eliminate those frequencies which are causing the interference.

In most cases, the interference comes from high powered pagers in the 153MHZ, 158MHZ, and 462MHZ frequencies showing up a "beeps" and "noise". In other cases I got "skipping" from the 162MHZ (weather) and 155MHZ (fire/police). The skipping was the communications of these frequencies showing up on the frequencies I was listening to....very annoying at best....making the scanner unusable at times.

The PAR filters work by filtering those frequencies from entering the front end of the scanner, thus eliminating the problem. Along with the elimination of the interference came an increase in range due to the front end of the scanner no longer being overloaded by many of the high powered frequencies.

The frequencies which were the greatest problem were:

153MHZ(pagers), 158MHZ(pagers), 155MHZ(fire and police) and 162MHZ(weather)

Using the combination of filters, tuned antenna, and amplifiers I was able to get a maximum range of over 30 miles (up from just 2 miles without).

The PAR filters are simple to use and very effective. Just put them between the antenna and scanner using standard BNC connectors and that's it. They can be chained together when using multiple filters. I have made a 1' x 6" x 2" box with all my filters connected together (along with the amplifiers) that can be easily connected/disconnected from the scanner and antenna. The box is small enought to fit right under the car seat making it convenient for travel.

The PAR catalog numbers are as follows:

VHFDN153HT
VHFDN158HT
VHFDN162HT
VHFDN(XXX)HT = any custom freq
VHFFM

The price of the off the shelf filters is $69.95 and a custom filter (like the 155MHZ PAR made for me) is $79.95.

In the long run, the money is well worth it because they can be used with any scanner system or antenna.