couple of bcd436 questions

[golftango]

ok, now i'm remembering how this ui works. it's like the brain dead tabs in windows where, when you select a tab, it moves on you. that drives me nuts! but i connected the 996, created a database, then found the /download from radio/ tab and captured my database. and there's all sorts of settings panels where i ended up, so if i can repeat what i did with the 436 i'm sure i'll be very happy with this app. but damm it! quit moving the user interface elements around and hiding them--that was dumb when windows did it and hasn't improved since.

 

[golftango]

and now i remember the feature i liked the best--the little frequency window where you could type in a frequency directly. so i'll eventually get the hang of it again. i just freaked out when tabs started disappearing on me and i''m not a windows user--i only use it for my radios and other devices which aren't supported on the mac, so it doesn't take much to freak me out in windows.

 

[golftango]

thanks to everyone who posted tips and letting me know things are possible. once i know you can do it, that's most of the battle.

the things i was missing on the 436 (and remember, i've only had it for 5 hours and most of that was spent on software) were /profiles/ and /favorites/ and evidently if you don't have one of each set, you don't see anything in the software. i achieved the goal of finding my radio settings in sentinel after reading them in, changing them, then writing them back to the radio and saving them to the profile. but before i'd created a profile, none of that was visible.

so, overnight i'm going to read through the uniden pdf, the easier-to-read html manual, the sentinel pdf, and then the proscan pdf and i should be a lot further along.

sorry for the step-by-step frustration, but it's a pattern from many years of beta testing where they'd hand me some hardware or software and see if i could figure out how to use it, so i'd log everything i tried, what worked and what didn't, then my guesses as to why stuff didn't work.

tks agn! /guy (73 de kg5vt | wqpz784)

 

[golftango]

[del]
At least with the 436HP and your 996P2, you'll be ready for when Abilene transitions from their current ProVoice system to P25 Phase II.

[del]

i had no idea what abilene was on. i spent 25yrs in dfw (hated every single second of it, btw--i was so close to the airport i couldn't use any of my radios but airband stuff) and i just moved back here when outsourcing eventually caught up to me. you make your living on the internet, you can be replaced with anyone with a cellphone, unfortunately.

i bought a place with 1/2 acre about 15mi south of abilene so i could put up an antenna farm and then i got too sick to climb on a stepladder. the fire department put me up a dual-band j-pole at 10' because i support their spotters and am still certified, but i'm in a circle of small hills in a low spot and can't get back into abilene although i can hit the skywarn repeater which, luckily, is nearly within sight of me.

anyway, i bought at least 4 antennas to put up and a large discone was the one for the scanner. it's partially assembled in a bedroom on the floor and that's my scanner antenna. so i can barely hear even the strongest signals from abilene. dyess afb though is only a couple of miles north, so they provide most of my traffic along with local fd and ems.

/guy

 

[hiegtx]

i had no idea what abilene was on.
Abilene, at present, is on this EDACS system. I purchased the ProVoice upgrade so that I could hear DFW Airport (at least until they upgrade to P25 Phase II), and also Abilene. I get out that way a time or two a year.

i spent 25yrs in dfw (hated every single second of it, btw--i was so close to the airport i couldn't use any of my radios but airband stuff) and i just moved back here when outsourcing eventually caught up to me. you make your living on the internet, you can be replaced with anyone with a cellphone, unfortunately

.
Been there, done that on both items. From the late 70's to the early 90's, I was working at DFW Airport. I had gotten off a little early one day, and thus just missed getting caught up in the Delta 191 crash in 1985. I was working the day of the second Delta crash, in 1987, where the pilots did not set their flaps correctly, and went down just after takeoff on the south end of the airport. I was on the north end, and could see the smoke, plus multiple responders blowing by my location enroute to the crash site.

I spent 18 years working for an IT services firm, ordering parts for service calls. As of January this year, I was laid off, as the company continued the downsizing that has been in grogress for several years.

i bought a place with 1/2 acre about 15mi south of abilene so i could put up an antenna farm and then i got too sick to climb on a stepladder. the fire department put me up a dual-band j-pole at 10' because i support their spotters and am still certified, but i'm in a circle of small hills in a low spot and can't get back into abilene although i can hit the skywarn repeater which, luckily, is nearly within sight of me.

anyway, i bought at least 4 antennas to put up and a large discone was the one for the scanner. it's partially assembled in a bedroom on the floor and that's my scanner antenna. so i can barely hear even the strongest signals from abilene. dyess afb though is only a couple of miles north, so they provide most of my traffic along with local fd and ems.

/guy

You should be able to hear some of the Vhf S.O. channels from the surrounding counties. Many of those have strong signals that carry quite well. I can hear a few of them from a friend's place in Stephens County, using a small mag mount antenna on my SUV.

Are you near other transmitters? Broadcast TV and/or FM? It's possible that they may be washing out some of your reception. If you can eventually get your antenna either up on the roof, or at least in your attic, your reception may be greatly improved. If you have aluminum siding on your house, as I do, that attenuates your reception quite a bit.

 

[golftango]

i had no idea what abilene was on.
Abilene, at present, is on this EDACS system. I purchased the ProVoice upgrade so that I could hear DFW Airport (at least until they upgrade to P25 Phase II), and also Abilene. I get out that way a time or two a year.

i lived a 3-wood shot away from the airport at 360/183 across the road from the aa ?school?. i didn't much monitor air business and ground, just air control stuff.

Been there, done that on both items. From the late 70's to the early 90's, I was working at DFW Airport. I had gotten off a little early one day, and thus just missed getting caught up in the Delta 191 crash in 1985. I was working the day of the second Delta crash, in 1987, where the pilots did not set their flaps correctly, and went down just after takeoff on the south end of the airport. I was on the north end, and could see the smoke, plus multiple responders blowing by my location enroute to the crash site.

i didn't get there until about 1995. general dynamics got bought by lockheed when i was still in abilene and i was working for computer sciences (their computer services contractor) who offered me a job if i'd move to lockheed in fort worth. i agreed, but only if i got out of midrange/mainframe and into networking and i worked nights and taught myself.

the only vhf fire i can hear besides buffalo gap is jim ned and moro. i can 'hear' a dozen others, but with way too much qrn for comfort. i get taylor co ems and metrocare ems solid copy. i can hear the park rangers at the state park since i'm in walking distance of it. and i can hear maybe 3-4 ham repeaters comfortably, but only talk into one so far. at least, when i walked up the hill with a ht, my ic-7100 isn't in service yet since i have no hf antenna for it.

I spent 18 years working for an IT services firm, ordering parts for service calls. As of January this year, I was laid off, as the company continued the downsizing that has been in grogress for several years.
You should be able to hear some of the Vhf S.O. channels from the surrounding counties. Many of those have strong signals that carry quite well. I can hear a few of them from a friend's place in Stephens County, using a small mag mount antenna on my SUV.

what firm was that? i left csc around 1997 and started at sprint's dallas hq in irving. i literally got jumpstarted when the telecomm bubble started expanding and i had been a ham and a navy radioman and now i knew networking. then a dutch company which was the network branch of philips electronics hired me right after y2k and i was there until i got outsourced 3 years ago in oct 2013. by then they'd been bought and sold several times and were owned by paris (france) based atos--the largest it services company in the world. we had the olympics contract for 12 years.

Are you near other transmitters? Broadcast TV and/or FM? It's possible that they may be washing out some of your reception. If you can eventually get your antenna either up on the roof, or at least in your attic, your reception may be greatly improved. If you have aluminum siding on your house, as I do, that attenuates your reception quite a bit.

i think nearest fm tower is about 15 miles away and no am bcst either. this is a nice rf-quiet place which is why i selected it. of course, that means i need efficient antennas up as high as i can get them in order to communicate at all. there's also no streetlights and for the first time in 25 years i can see more than a half-dozen asterisms and stars and planets. underground wiring and i have super-reliable electric and internet although i have to pay more for it. in euless, the damm tcu went out when the wind blew more than 10mph and all the isp's sucked and verizon fios never got there.

it's a trailer house, so yeah, i guess you could say i'm aluminum-impaired. i only have the one jpole outside. the ham club has promised several times to come put up a few and they never show up. i do have a ham friend in dfw who is going to come down and pour a base for a 10' rohn section so i can mount some.

 

[golftango]

look at the stats. i joined only a year after you, yet you have nearly 5k posts and this makes #30 for me. i literally couldn't use my radios in dfw, i tried every tip and trick and filter system and type of antenna and i couldn't even work the euless repeaters. but i carried the 396 and the 396xt for over 15 years every day. i had 3 sets of batteries and rotated them using the maha charger and they'd last a full 12-hour day. the close call feature has always been my absolute favorite--i used to carry 4 devices (including an aor wideband scanner) to enable me to do what the one uniden radio does. so despite what i say about paul, the guy's a friggin' genius. it's amazing what he can do with the limited number of keys, but unfortunately i just don't have the memory stack to keep it all in my head even for one radio.

 

[ProScan]

golftango,

If the demo expired, did you purchase a license from me to get it working? I can set you up with a 30 day fully functional trial/demo. All it takes is an email.

first, you can't seem to change radios. at least not easily.

Go to the Menu - Scanner Type and choose from the selection.

i can't read from the radio nor is there a panel to change settings, much less to read them, change them

Make sure a database file is opened first then you can Download from or Upload to the scanner.

what has happened to the programmers of america? maybe we should make them all go back to cobol and learn something. you manage to program a user interface in cobol, you've sone something!

Is cobol a GUI language and how useful is it for a Computer Aided Scanning program?

you cant use the mouse or the arrow keys, so if you go into the menu system and want to move between lines, you have to make a micro-movement with the mouse on a tiny tiny little circle that i guess represents the control knob on top.

Click the knob once to focus it and then use the arrow keys or mouse scroll knob to move the knob.

One thing ProScan doesn't do is import from/to BCDx36HP to another scanner type. You will have to Import from RadioReference DB again or import from a Sentinel HPE/HPD file.

 

[ProScan]

how do i read data from the 436?

1. Put the scanner in Mass Storage mode.
2. Insure the ProScan Scanner Type is set to BCD436HP.
3. Click the Favorites Editor checkbox left side of the top menu.
4. Click on Read From Scanner.

 

[golftango]

this was my fault. i didn't realize that without a profile and/or a favorites set in the 436, many items wouldn't even show up, much less work. i already bought it--i remember using it long long ago, it has a lot of nice touches such as the manual frequency entry window, but for us folks with poor eyesight, a double-sized display would be great when controlling these radios. for some reason though, increasing the image size must be an insurmountable problem or else the developers don't think anyone wants it, because the only app i have which allows for it is my android airdroid app which let's me see my phone double-sized. it's a huge improvement.

aha! thanks for the /focus/ tip. i'm not a computer gamer and intensely dislike clicking at random. i hate the little icons on my iphone because there's no predicting what they do.

you seem to be saying that i can't share my 996 file and my 436 file, is that true? no way to export and then import? no way to run two instances of your app and copy and paste? well, the new home patrol radios do seem to have a completely new mindset needed and, compared to previous generations, are missing some stuff we've come to count on over the years.

many thanks for the response. it'll be smoother sailing after i've absorbed about 4-6 hours of documentation. that's what i get for trying to wing it.

/guy

 

[jonwienke]

The data architecture of the 996 and 436 are different and not easily converted.

 

[ProScan]

you seem to be saying that i can't share my 996 file and my 436 file, is that true? no way to export and then import?

Not directly. The file structures on the DMA (including 996) and HP (including 436) types are very different. You can use Sentinel to read the BCD436HP and save the data then use ProScan to import from Sentinel but that works just for systems and not profile or config.

{edit}

increasing the image size must be an insurmountable problem or else the developers don't think anyone wants it,

There's no way, I'm aware of to increase the size of the whole program.

 

[dave3825]

If you update a frequency 'in the field', but don't mirror the change in Sentinel as well, the next time you write to the scanner from Sentinel, your changes get overwritten with older data.

If one makes changes in the field, one should have Sentinel read the scanner first.

 

[golftango]

If one makes changes in the field, one should have Sentinel read the scanner first.

sorry, i meant that proscan has a 'field' or input window to the right of the control image where you can enter a frequency or jump places. it's very handy.

and yeah, ever since paul came along at uniden, i've been scared to hit any buttons out in the field. i invariably put myself into some mode i can't easily get out of. i carried my 396xt in the car for 10-15 years of trips back and forth to work across dfw and i never ever hit any buttons while i was driving.

 

[golftango]

The data architecture of the 996 and 436 are different and not easily converted.

yet, there are ways. rt systems supports hundreds of radios and moving info among them is basically just copy and paste or, at worst, export/import. chirp supports more radios and export/import mostly works between most radios. freescan has something called 'ezgrab' which will pull your clipboard and attempt to convert it to whatever radio you're using.

i'm not a programmer, but i think it depends on whether you planned on allowing this before you wrote a line of code. agreed it's hard to retrofit the ability to do it.

 

[golftango]

[del]

There's no way, I'm aware of to increase the size of the whole program.

i highly suspect this is because windows ide's suck so badly. i doubt you'd bet any random mac developer he or she couldn't do it in a mac app.

 

[hiegtx]

i lived a 3-wood shot away from the airport at 360/183 across the road from the aa ?school?. i didn't much monitor air business and ground, just air control stuff.

i didn't get there until about 1995. general dynamics got bought by lockheed when i was still in abilene and i was working for computer sciences (their computer services contractor) who offered me a job if i'd move to lockheed in fort worth. i agreed, but only if i got out of midrange/mainframe and into networking and i worked nights and taught myself.

I also had ATC loaded in the scanner I was using at that time. The Airport was still Uhf conventional, so I had them entered.

what firm was that? i left csc around 1997 and started at sprint's dallas hq in irving. i literally got jumpstarted when the telecomm bubble started expanding and i had been a ham and a navy radioman and now i knew networking. then a dutch company which was the network branch of philips electronics hired me right after y2k and i was there until i got outsourced 3 years ago in oct 2013. by then they'd been bought and sold several times and were owned by paris (france) based atos--the largest it services company in the world. we had the olympics contract for 12 years.

I worked for Dallas based CompuCom Systems. They were in what used to be the old EDS headquarters off Forest Lane (just west of Medical City Dallas). Last summer, they moved HQ to a new building in the Legacy West area of Plano, but I was still working at home. Back in mid-December 2016, they announced that all the local work-at-home staff would have to start reporting to the new office location. They decided that there was too much empty space, and wanted to utilize it more fully. That would have turned into a 1.5 to 2 hour commute each way for me, so the layoff in January was actually to my advantage. Instead of resigning due to the excessive commute time (not to mention the extra gas & tolls that could have run $500 or so a month), by being laid off, I got severance as well as cash out for accumulated time off.

i think nearest fm tower is about 15 miles away and no am bcst either. this is a nice rf-quiet place which is why i selected it. of course, that means i need efficient antennas up as high as i can get them in order to communicate at all. there's also no streetlights and for the first time in 25 years i can see more than a half-dozen asterisms and stars and planets. underground wiring and i have super-reliable electric and internet although i have to pay more for it. in euless, the damm tcu went out when the wind blew more than 10mph and all the isp's sucked and verizon fios never got there.

it's a trailer house, so yeah, i guess you could say i'm aluminum-impaired. i only have the one jpole outside. the ham club has promised several times to come put up a few and they never show up. i do have a ham friend in dfw who is going to come down and pour a base for a 10' rohn section so i can mount some.

Yeah, the attenuation from the aluminum in the trailer is limiting your reception as much or more than the lack of height. And, being a trailer, there's no attic to utilize.

The stock antenna is a compromise, and is part (but not all) of your poor reception. I've had good luck with this antenna. It can be extended to optimize reception on specific frequency bands (the antenna has markings on it to show this). I used that on my HP-1 when I spent a month in the hospital for surgery and rehab back in 2013. Even though I was inside a concrete and steel building in both facilities, I was receiving all of the local systems, both trunked and conventional.

 

[dave3825]

sorry, i meant that proscan has a 'field' or input window to the right of the control image where you can enter a frequency or jump places. it's very handy.

and yeah, ever since paul came along at uniden, i've been scared to hit any buttons out in the field. i invariably put myself into some mode i can't easily get out of. i carried my 396xt in the car for 10-15 years of trips back and forth to work across dfw and i never ever hit any buttons while i was driving.

I make many changes as I am out and away from my pc. Once one becomes more familiar with the radio, Sentinel and Proscan, it's pretty easy to fix anything that was done out in the field. Its also a learning experience. If someone keeps messing up their radio, and just writing back from sentinel, they're really not learning what they did wrong in the first place. But everyone has their own way of doing things. I choose to always read the radio first to fine tune my changes from on the road and or fix anything that get messed up. Kinda hard to enter alpha tags while driving. It's also easier to spot any problems looking at a pc screen as opposed to a tiny display that you can't see that good. I still do routine back ups just incase the sd card craps out.

 

[golftango]

oh yeah, i know compucom and eds. we had massive cross-pollination with those companies. atos was located in a halliburton bunker off bowen rd next to the parks mall. it was like 1-3' concrete, so there wasn't any listening to be had from there except for mall security.

and i have about 3 dozen ht antennas i've compiled over the years. lost a dozen or two in the recent move along with several radios. i mean, they're in boxes somewhere, but i can't get to them.

long ago i found a little jewel of an antenna for dfw area--the radio shack 800mhz antenna. it became a legend. i have one because it's been permanent mounted to my now retired 396xt. but i saw just the other day that radio shack online has them onsale for $24. amazon has only one and wants $36. many say it's a little 'deaf' on high band, but i found it plenty good enough for 140-170 use. anyone who concentrates on 700-900mhz ought to pick one up before they're completely gone. scanner master sells a couple of watson look-alikes, but they just aren't the same and are around $30-40.

https://www.radioshack.com/products/radioshack-800mhz-scanner-antenna

btw, about the same time r/s released the 800mhz antenna, they released a uhf race antenna designed to only pick up uhf from about a 1-2 mile range. it was even smaller than a bog-standard tiny duck and in my rf-soaked environment i found it extremely useful in certain situations and locations. you can still get these--they proved quite popular with the nascar crowd.

btw, the factory 436 antenna picks up 162.400mhz better than any of the antennas i've tried on it so far. not sure what that means though ....

others i plan to use with it include ones i'm going to use on my new kenwood d74:

* a laboratory monitor stainless telescoping whip with a bnc connector.
* a watson telescoping such as you mention with marks for various bands. from the looks of the diamond at the link, i suspect they are clones. i know this one is good because it's on my dc-to-daylight icom r20!
* a comet tri-band (ht-224) which also covers several ranges of bands on receive.
* a diamond rh77ca. i have at least 3 variations of this one.

at atos i was a member of a 4-person network analysis team not counting our boss, the network manager who kept us apprised of things on the horizon, so we knew the outsourcing was coming. tony even made a 3-week trip to india to scope out the scenario. i was 61 and already saving and planning for when it happened, but i was hoping i could make it to retirement, and that didn't happen. the worst part was we had to train our replacements and a group of more clueless idiots i've never encountered. letting them loose on some of our huge and security-paranoid accounts such as global banks seemed like unleashing isis on them. but they did it and i got outsourced into the dammed government shutdown and then the gop followed up by aborting my unemployment. they made a lifetime enemy of me, the va had lost my records, and the aca computer system was so terrible it took me, a savvy computer professional, 3 months to just get an account, then 3 more months because blue cross was just as overwhelmed.

it wasn't pretty. i spent two years trying to get on disability and into the va and had no income and of course the texas republicans did all they could to keep the aca from working--no medicaid and the 34 republican doctors here in abilene wouldn't take my insurance card. the hospital, which they run, still won't take it. anyway, after 3 tries and two years i finally got on disability which got me onto medicare and full socsec retirement and about that time the va let me in. a little bit--i still can't get on military disability because the records from the aircraft carrier they say are gone, so i have to pay for a lot of services. but by then i'd drained my 401k trying to fix this trailer house which was the worst single mistake of my life.

never too old to live and learn i guess. but despite me being completely apolitical all my life, now i have domestic terrorists to fight--the gop--who have tried to kill me since i lost my job. and are busy now trying to kill the rest of you. those without money, i mean.


here's the watson antenna i have on my r20:

http://www.scannermaster.com/W_889_Tele_Gainer_BNC_Portable_Antenna_p/28-541187.htm

 

[golftango]

I make many changes as I am out and away from my pc. Once one becomes more familiar with the radio, Sentinel and Proscan, it's pretty easy to fix anything that was done out in the field. Its also a learning experience. If someone keeps messing up their radio, and just writing back from sentinel, they're really not learning what they did wrong in the first place. But everyone has their own way of doing things. I choose to always read the radio first to fine tune my changes from on the road and or fix anything that get messed up. Kinda hard to enter alpha tags while driving. It's also easier to spot any problems looking at a pc screen as opposed to a tiny display that you can't see that good. I still do routine back ups just incase the sd card craps out.

i do exactly the same except the opposite. i don't want to (or rarely want to) keep any changes i make in the field so i write to the radio my last active file. this is because it's so easy to screw up settings given the menu system and the multi-function buttons. if i need to permanently change something i'll do it in the field--if i can remember how--and then remind myself to change my file instead of taking the chance of writing some self-imposed corruption from the radio to my computer.