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BCD396T Piece of junk or am I missing something?
On Jun 12, 1:51 pm, Jesse wrote:
wrote in news:1181578745.407049.267610 @x35g2000prf.googlegroups.com: Hi, Bought a bcd396t last weekend and was really excited about scanning. Never owned one or new anything about it. I turned it on and cleared all memory first, since my area didn't seem to be pre-programmed. I live in Bay Point CA, 94565. Sat outside my house to see what was going on on a Saturday night. I did an automatic search for police activity and had one or two frequencies that gave me some messages every once in a while. Was hard to understand too by the way Is this all there is to it, or should it be more exciting? I expected more action on a Saturday night, especially in my area, but all I got was a message every once in a while. Or should I not use the automatic search, because it doesn't work properly? Is the automatic search able to find all different frequencies, like trunking, conventional, etc...? I guess I'm confused because it didn't give me the action I was hoping for. I returned the unit on sunday...very disappointed, but maybe someone could tell me I'm wrong and I need to do certain things to get this unit to work. thanks Well duh for you. You are supposed to figure out how to operate a high tech unit before taking it back. If you are the type that can't even program a VCR timer then yeah, I'd say you made the right move.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - As a matter of fact, I do know how to program. I program in more than 10 languages, I speak 4 languages, I have AS, BS, MS degrees in computer science and AI, and I don't consider myself a novice when it comes to technology. In addition, I also program everything that comes with a good manual. How would I know the unit I bought operates as it should if the manual cannot describe a basic test to perform to see the unit is working properly. I expected to hear some basic frequencies when I did a search, but I could not hear anything. That's my problem. The documentation assumes one knows all the tweaks of the unit. I just didn't want to get in knee-deep before I know the basics are working. I think I do understand the basics, but somehow cannot make it work. So here's what I did: 1) First I scanned the preprogrammed frequencies, but scanner didn't stop at any frequency. 2) Then I played with the squelch (didn't know what it was for, neither wasn't explained anywhere, neither wasn't pointed out what level to sit it to), so I put is in the middle 3) then did scan again, didn't matter. No conversations anywhere. 4) Then I reset the scanner. 5) then I did a search for frequencies. Found 1 or 2 frequencys, one was probably a PD, which only tracked a dispatch every few minutes, no real conversations going on. The other one I found during a search was a boater or so. 6) I live in the middle of the action, but wasn't able to find anything 7) I drove around, tried close calls, etc...nothing ... 8) I did try the FM radio, that seemed to work 9) I assumed either the unit was not working properly or the whole scanning thing must be really boring since I only here a dispatcher once every 5 minutes talking for 2 seconds, 10) I also entered some of my area's frequencies found on radioreference.com, but they were dead as well. So, obviously I am missing something Maybe the squelch wasn't set correctly. Still don't know what it does exactly. I read most people set it to either 1 or 2. If there's 15 settings for it, why would most people set it to either 1 or 2? shouldn't be somehwere average around 7, so one can go both ways? Thanks |
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