BCD436HP/BCD536HP: Best NON-US scanner

So I was all set to buy the UBCD396XT (because it's basically the only one officially sold by Uniden in Australia), and then I saw that the BCD325P2 is available in the US which is mostly an improvement.

But now I'm wondering if I should consider the BCD436HP. What is putting me off is I know a lot of the features are US specific, which are useless to me. The RR.com channels, US postcode selection etc are useless.

Being a bit new to scanning I don't understand how this thing is programmed. I know there is the Sentinal program. I know that freescan doesn't support it. Proscan does but "without database", and I don't understand what that means. Is that the RR.com database which I don't care about? Or does it mean you can't program the channels with Proscan?

I was also thinking about hacking it a bit by connecting with the serial port, but I'm a bit concerned this thing isn't as well documented as the BCD396XT and BCD325P2. Is the protocol just basically a combination of the already published commands?

Anyway, the basic question is, will a non-US resident be disappointed / annoyed with the 436 compared to the 396/325, or is it still going to be all improvement? What is this Proscan "without a database" thing about?

I've never used Proscan so I'm only guessing, but I think the implication is that you can read and write favorites lists but can't update the main database (the "RR.com channels").

Despite what has been said about it in the forums, the 436 is a formidable radio, but it may not be right for you in Australia for a couple of reasons. First and foremost is, IIRC, the top 1 MHz of the Australian "800 band" is missing because in North America that is part of the mobile (cellular) phone network. So if you had any systems that you wanted to listen to which included an 869.x frequency you'd have problems.
I'm not 100% sure if there are other bands that are missing/offset. I visited Australia in 2010 and brought my North America spec 396T with me, and as far as I remember it worked okay for most of the things I wanted to listen to.

If you go to the "Easier to Read 436 Manual" at this link Easier to Read BCD436/536HP Digital Scanner Manual and look for the section marked "Default Band Coverage", you'll see what limitations the 436 has. Note that on that list, the mode (FM/AM/etc) and step size can be changed in software, but the band limits cannot. So you can't take, for example, the aforementioned 800 band which stops at 868.9875 and expand it further upwards.

The "Sentinel" program that comes free with the 436 does a fine job of programming it, including the favorites lists, which is what you'd use almost exclusively. Favorites lists are collections of systems, and systems are collections of "departments" (for conventional channels and trunk systems) and/or "sites" (for trunk systems), and departments have collections of "channels" (conventional frequencies or trunk system talkgroups).

I've theorized that you probably could make the location based scanning in the 436 (and pretty much any other Uniden scanner with the feature) work in Australia, or any other point on the globe outside North America, just by putting location data into your favorites lists and connecting up a GPS properly. It works for those of us in NA, so there's no reason it shouldn't work for you. The "zip code" part of course won't work, because the zip code table in the scanner is only programmed for North America, but I also have some ideas about that....

To sum up.. functionally speaking, the 436 is a better performer than the 396 in my opinion. I get better reception from the 436 (especially with a good antenna), better digital decode, and better features and extras. However, it would be risky to import one on the completely opposite side of the world if you get unlucky enough to encounter the problems that some but not all people have been experiencing, with clock battery life, etc. And the biggest concern, as I said above, for me would be the potentially incompatible band limits. If you are going to be wanting to hear things that the 436 can't reach, obviously going with a radio designed for Australia is a better choice.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I see the Australian spec scanner doesn't have a gap between 868 and 894 like the American model. Hopefully someone can tell me whether I should care about that range.

You're right that a lot of features are useless outside the US and Canada. Not helped by the fact that Uniden (despite being a Japanese company) have complete tunnel vision of the world and don't even allow you to define your own country,states,cities,etc nor define your own bandplan (although you can set the mod, but you are stuck with US band limits). Such a feature would not be rocket science to provide — they just can't be bothered.

Your argument is not relevant to Uniden as a whole. Uniden America has tunnel vision of North America because that's who they serve with the BC line of scanners. Uniden Australia is the real target involved here. The question is why they aren't adapting the scanners to the Australian market minus a few models. It's not Uniden who is not serving Australia - it's Uniden Australia. Uniden won't make what Uniden Australia isn't requesting.

There will be some band plan differences, which might be difficult to overcome. Specifically, the 80MHz band.

Check the specs, and see if you will have issues with the coverage.

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DSD+ would be a go option for you.

DSD+ Version 1.5 Released - rtl-sdr.com

You may have to ask this question at Australian forum, some already tried using US version of Unidens in OZ with mixed success http://aurfscan.com.au. As already mentioned above US version of firmware comes with different band plan to Aus/NZ/UK.

There is not much point in using an x36HP scanner here in Australia as their are no P25 Phase II systems to monitor and, as already stated, the frequency database feature is useless. Programming these scanners via software using the favorites option is also quite clunky.

One would be better off sticking with a 396XT/996XT or if P25 digital decoding quality is important then a Whistler WS-1040/WS-1065 (or the Radioshack equivalents) would be a better option.

cherubim said:

There is not much point in using an x36HP scanner here in Australia as their are no P25 Phase II systems to monitor and, as already stated, the frequency database feature is useless. Programming these scanners via software using the favorites option is also quite clunky.

One would be better off sticking with a 396XT/996XT or if P25 digital decoding quality is important then a Whistler WS-1040/WS-1065 (or the Radioshack equivalents) would be a better option.

Click to expand...

The 436 isn't just for Phase II systems. I have had dramatic improvements on P25 Phase I and P25 Conventional decoding, and greatly improved reception range/sensitivity, on my 436 compared to my previous 396XT and HomePatrol-1.

Favorite lists aren't that hard to put together. The 'zip code' solution I mentioned earlier turns out to be a bust (the CityTable and ZipTable files are not able to be messed with as I previously thought) - but if your favorites lists had location data, the GPS functionality (or the "manual location" input) on the 436 or even the HP1 would work just fine, I'm 99% confident of.

I should also point out that ACMA has a free .csv or .dbf download, updated daily, of their entire database, fully annotated/described, available here - so you would not have problem getting exact lat/long data for your favorites lists.

And, for the benefit of someone who could manipulate the CityTable and ZipTable files (ahem UPMan), there is an official list of Australian postcode centroids (lat and long points for the center of each postcode) available for purchase/download. There's also a free version available on Datalicious, but there are a number of zeroes in the file I downloaded from there - unsure if the official file is just as incomplete.

As far as I know, that's all the Zip table file does - maps your zipcode or postal code in USA or Canada respectively to a centroid. Theoretically, the Australian data is there (and I would be astonished if the same data isn't available for almost every industrialized nation) and could be implemented.

cherubim said:

There is not much point in using an x36HP scanner here in Australia as their are no P25 Phase II systems to monitor and, as already stated, the frequency database feature is useless. Programming these scanners via software using the favorites option is also quite clunky.

One would be better off sticking with a 396XT/996XT or if P25 digital decoding quality is important then a Whistler WS-1040/WS-1065 (or the Radioshack equivalents) would be a better option.

Click to expand...

Programming the x36 scanners using Favorites Lists is no more clunky than programming the x96 scanners. The basic concepts are essentially the same, which is to say they are equally painful to learn. FWIW I have a Whistler 1065, and a Uniden 536, and to me the decode on P25 is far superior on the Uniden radio, at least on the system I monitor..

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If we had the spec for the CityTable_V1_00_00.dat and ZipTable_V1_00_00.dat files, and the firmware allowed people to create their own country with relevant zip code format, we could crowd source the data for any country. Said he optimistically…