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BCD396T Piece of junk or am I missing something?
Spend the extra money and buy the BUTEL software for the 396.
You can then download systems directly from Radio Reference along with conventional frequencies now as well, right into the 296. No fuss, no muss. It's a breeze, and well worth the $$$... Dan On Jun 11, 3:55 pm, "Dave Ferguson" wrote: wrote in message groups.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 You had a very powerful scanner in your hands. I blame the person you bought it from for not showing you how to use it or at least program local agencies in it. Scanning is a great hobby but it's not a turn it on and listen kind of thing. You have to do some research of your area. A great place to start iswww.radioreference.com . They have the most extensive database for police/fire/rescue . I looked up Bay Point, CA and see it's in Contra Costa County. Here's a listing for that county:http://www.radioreference.com/module...me=RR&ctid=189. As you were scanning you were probably picking up bits and pieces of a "trunked" system. You can listen to it but it's hard to follow if you don't have your scanner set properly to listen to a trunked system. Here are the basics of a "trunked" system.http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Trunking Hope you reconsider. Dave- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - I bought it at Fry's, but nobody there who knew anything about it. When bought it, I had already looked at the website you mentioned, and entered the frequencies for police for my city. Every once in a while I could here someone talking for 1 or two seconds, but it seems that I should have heard much more than just a dispatcher going back and force only a few times an hour. Also, I found only 2 channels when I did the automatic search . I would expect to find much more. This was around 11 PM. I would still expect airplaines, Fire department, etc...I'm in the middle between two cities here(less than 2 miles), so there should be lots of stuff going on. How would one be able to program a trunking system then if the search is only for Convetional? also, I'm not sure if my PD uses digital or not. Is the search able to auto-detect digital as well? The user's manual that came with it is probably the worst manual I've ever read. Only today I found out about squelch. The manual said to set the squelch, but it didn't explain what squelch was and what to set it to. So, I put it in the middle when I tried the scanner and left it there. I would love to give it another try, but I am very sceptical now unless I can see somebody show it to me in my area... |
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