Can the Uniden BC350C listen to trunked channels?

[SfdCadet]

I am looking into buying a scanner that will beable to listen to the seattle fire department (which is trunked) and am wondering if the BC350C will work or if i need to purchase the BCT8 with Trunk TrackerIII.

this may be a very stupid question, but i cannot figure it out.

Thanks

 

[jclarkr6]

I am looking into buying a scanner that will be able to listen to the seattle fire department (which is trunked) and am wondering if the BC350C will work or if i need to purchase the BCT8 with Trunk TrackerIII.

Since the Seattle Fire Department uses a Motorola Type II trunking system, you will need a trunking scanner such as the BCT8 to easily monitor their radio traffic. I think that it may be possible to listen to small portions of their transmissions with a BC350C (by scanning the voice channels), but the BC350C (since it does not support trunking) would not be able to follow the conversations like the BCT8 would. If I were you, I would buy the BCT8 because that will allow you to effectively monitor the Seattle Fire Department.

Just a quick note, Uniden recently came out with a new mobile scanner that many users seem to like; it's called the Uniden BCT15X. Check it out here: Uniden Bearcat BCT15X Police Scanner Radio

 

[ve1sef]

If the 350C covers the 800Mhz band, then you could monitor the trunk system. However, as stated above, it would be hard to follow the
conversation without a trunking scanner. The reason being that trunk systems normally have several different users (public works, snow plows, taxis etc) sharing the system frequenices. A conventional scanner like the 350-C would hear everyone. This can be annoying if your trying to follow a large scale incident, or one of the other agencies are usng digital or encyrpted radios. Thus the advantage of a trunking scanner, you can select what users you want to monitor.

 

[rvictor]

Trunked conversations can move from one frequency to another during the conversation. While the 350C can hear parts of such a conversation, it doesn't have the ability to follow that conversation from one frequency to another. Therefore it's not a reliable way to listen to trunked systems.

Dick