BCT7

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StupidGuy

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Dec 8, 2013
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Mountain Home, AR
Someone I know gave me this scanner. I know nothing about them, but I must say that its so easy. I bought a TV antenna at radio shack, some wire an an adapter. That's it. I put the antenna on the roof and I can hear all kinds of stuff. From what I understand, "radio heads" have this down to a science. Did I just get lucky? What I mean is, that mine works great, and I just hooked it all up like a cave man. I guess my SN says it all lol.
As far as my area and the police channels goes. Its hit or miss. They switched some to digital within the last couple months from what I read in the paper, but not all of them. With that being said. Sometimes I hear this god awful noise both ways, or just one way. Then other times its fine. I guess this is from some of that digital equipment? I always wanted a scanner, and its fun to listen in until that noise knocks me off my chair. For now I am tuned into the weather. We took a winter blast (in the fall) over here. More snow in one day than the last 4 winters combined : (.
 

kennyloatman

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Jun 25, 2007
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629
Location
Cumberland Co., NJ
The 7 is a good radio, I have had mine for a good many years, It has very good reception qualities. The only thing is I have never been able to get the Bear Tracker alert to activate except when turning it on, then it is very annoying .
 

ab8sn

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Sep 3, 2006
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514
Location
Camden On Gauley WV
I also agree I have two 7's and they are great radios. I wish they had the capability to do P25 Trunking:)

73s

Chad
 

StupidGuy

Member
Joined
Dec 8, 2013
Messages
6
Location
Mountain Home, AR
The 7 is a good radio, I have had mine for a good many years, It has very good reception qualities. The only thing is I have never been able to get the Bear Tracker alert to activate except when turning it on, then it is very annoying .
Very annoying. I kept thinking I was turning it up to fast. Its just full blast, all the time. Darn buzzer.
[
QUOTE=ab8sn;2085183]I also agree I have two 7's and they are great radios. I wish they had the capability to do P25 Trunking:)

73s

Chad[/QUOTE]

Ya, it was nice while it lasted anyways.
 

oracavon

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Joined
Apr 24, 2010
Messages
429
Location
Somewhere out west
Someone I know gave me this scanner. I know nothing about them, but I must say that its so easy. I bought a TV antenna at radio shack, some wire an an adapter. That's it. I put the antenna on the roof and I can hear all kinds of stuff. From what I understand, "radio heads" have this down to a science. Did I just get lucky? What I mean is, that mine works great, and I just hooked it all up like a cave man. I guess my SN says it all lol.
As far as my area and the police channels goes. Its hit or miss. They switched some to digital within the last couple months from what I read in the paper, but not all of them. With that being said. Sometimes I hear this god awful noise both ways, or just one way. Then other times its fine. I guess this is from some of that digital equipment? I always wanted a scanner, and its fun to listen in until that noise knocks me off my chair. For now I am tuned into the weather. We took a winter blast (in the fall) over here. More snow in one day than the last 4 winters combined : (.

Two things I can think of:

1. If you indicate which antenna you got, I might be able to tell you a couple things that would help you get even better signals from it if it's a directional antenna. I actually use a TV antenna to get better reception from some stations than I can get from my scanner antennas. Many of the frequencies between TV and public service channels are close (and, in some cases, the same), so you can easily get good reception with a TV antenna in many cases.

2. The noise is probably a digital signal. Digital transmissions sound almost like a jackhammer on an analog scanner. You should definitely lock out or delete those channels.
 

StupidGuy

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Joined
Dec 8, 2013
Messages
6
Location
Mountain Home, AR
Two things I can think of:

1. If you indicate which antenna you got, I might be able to tell you a couple things that would help you get even better signals from it if it's a directional antenna. I actually use a TV antenna to get better reception from some stations than I can get from my scanner antennas. Many of the frequencies between TV and public service channels are close (and, in some cases, the same), so you can easily get good reception with a TV antenna in many cases.

2. The noise is probably a digital signal. Digital transmissions sound almost like a jackhammer on an analog scanner. You should definitely lock out or delete those channels.

That's it. The jackhammer sound, it drives me nuts. It's so loud.
The ant I use is for a TV also. It has a peg you would snap into the top of the TV, and it just has two Telescoping Antenna's. I sat it up next to a vent and used some tape. I had also bought 100' of wire and soldered it to the inside of the ant.

Funny thing is that I noticed it had fell, and when I went up to put some more tape on, I noticed both sides of the ant had been folded over and kinked. I live in the middle of nowhere so I cant think someone went up and bent them. I would guess a large bird tried to land on the ant and bent them? I am talking 90 degrees lol. Nuts. So I tried to straighten them out but they would break off. So its up and they are all bent to the sides lol. Still getting signals just fine though. I might need to buy something else : ). Should I just get the same thing or do you know of another way that would be affordable? I might have to take pics of the ant. Its so funny looking.
 

oracavon

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Joined
Apr 24, 2010
Messages
429
Location
Somewhere out west
Ah, well, that's about the same as a coat hanger trimmed to length. If you did well with that, then just about anything would work. I was thinking along the lines of a standard rooftop TV antenna, some of which are fairly inexpensive.

If you have one of the directional TV antennas (that kind of look like an arrow with a bunch of horizontal elements arranged in a "V" pattern), then you can point it toward the radio transmitters of interest and get better reception of distant signals. Plus it will still pick up local signals from all directions.

The thing directional TV antennas is that they are horizontally polarized (TV is transmitted using horizontal waves), whereas radio communications are vertically polarized. So you can get better radio reception with a directional TV antenna if you mount it 90 degrees from normal so that the elements of the antenna are vertical instead of horizontal. However, this trick doesn't work so well with non-directional TV antennas that pick up stations from all directions - if you do that with those types of antennas, then they tend to pick up radio signals from just a couple of directions (forward and backward).

So it all depends on the directions and distances of what you want to pick up. I mentioned the TV antenna thing only because you said you already had one (although the directional thing doesn't work with what you have - called "rabbit ears" in the TV business). If you were happy with what you were using, then just about any cheap scanner antenna covering the bands you listen to would do even better.
 
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