The Uniden 796D software is a piece of crap and Uniden should be ashamed to
include it. I wasted two weeks trying to get the crap to work.
It never did. The solution is www.butel.com. Buy the ARC250 software
(approximately $50) and that will solve your bank information creation and file
transfer problems. Attempting to manually program the 796D manually borders on
insanity and takes forever.

Additionally, the 796D has a decoding problem with talkgroups 40,000 and
higher. Uniden knows this and there is a software upgrade available on its
website. I downloaded and installed it. It definitely was an improvement for
40,000 and higher talkgroups.

If you are not knowledgeable about trunking systems, the 796D can be very
intimidating. It also is a rather poor performer for analog reception. The
receiver sensitivity is not on par with an ICOM R7000, R7100 etc. I knew this
before I bought my 796D. I bought it for digital trunking reception only.

The manual is not as bad as others I have experienced. However, there are
some keyboard entries that are not documented in the manual.
The specific step instructions could be expanded and more specific. One command
actually is reversed. I believe it is the Activity on/off.

Believe it or not, 100 talkgroup maximum is not enough for some metro type
operations. In my area of central Virginia there is a regional
800 mhz. TRS including two counties and one city. It is extremely annoying
monitoring one specific county and having other jurisdictions
transmit on some of their TRS frequencies. Attempting to lockout the many
unwanted talkgroups is not practical.

Even using a TRS receiver it is amazing how many conversations are missed
because the receiver decodes only one talkgroup at a time.
This can be seen visually by using Trunktracker 3.8.3.

I have a 796D programing and helpful reception tips file included with my
"W4UVV Virginia Frequency Directory-2004 Edition" CD ROM.




Ronny Julian wrote:

No it's me too! I can get one bank working but nothing else. The stock
software is written by someone who cannot program under Microsoft's display
parameters (cuts off on the bottom) and the crud is not easy to use.

Glad I can give this back to it's owner soon. Not mine.

"Lobo" wrote in message
...
If anyone has a BC796D and would like to exchange programming tips, errors
or just your frustration....I have been purchasing Bearcat and Uniden
scanners since the BC100 and this BC796D is the most confusing and has the
worst users manual I have ever seen. Is it just me?