new and just got some gear now what

[sepiid]

just bought this gear off of scanner master hit 605$~ with shipping

Uniden Bearcat BCD396XT Scanner
[Programming:1 County]
[List Counties:San Mateo County]
[PC Cable:USB-1 Cable 4']

i git this for listening to local pd etc... as we live in a bad neighborhood and would like to know when there is police activity nearby. i live in east palo alto which is in the bay area. so looking for info on picking up frequencies out here.

what i would like to know is there an antenna i should be looking at getting besides the one in the box?
and i ordered it with programming because i wasnt sure on how to do it as the last scanner i have used was on old bedside that just "scanned" all the frequencies (was about 18 years ago)

 

[OsloViking1975]

RR has a database for each state and list frequencies for your area or nearby cities. If you click on database you will see a map of the United States there you can click on California and click your county. Best place for information would be in the Califonia forum. Jusy click on cp and scroll down to California and there should be plenty of fellow Californians to answer your questions. You got yourself a pretty nice scanner.Onething cool about your scanner is the gps capability.

 

[sepiid]

so i ordered it with the programing.

is there anyone out there that has a pre saved program using freescan for the sacramento/north highlands area i could have a look at? so i can start to learn how the programming works.

 

[ka3jjz]

Go ask in the California forum.

In addition, I would go to our wiki and read a few things to get yourself familiar with the terminology, and especially how DMA works. To get there, go up to the right under the Scanner Master ad and float your mouse over Wiki then select Wiki home. On that page, read these links found under Links for Newcomers

- Scanning 101
- Scanning Q&A
- Glossary (this one will be one you will want to bookmark - it has definitions for most every term you will see on this site)
- Common Conventional Programming Questions
- Common Trunking Programming Questions
- Connecting Scanners via USB (eventually you will want to do this...)
- Trunking Basics

and near the bottom, under Popular Topics, the Uniden DMA FAQ - which is another link you should bookmark as there's lots there about DMA and many of the functions you will now be able to do.

As for antennas - if you are mostly listening on 800, RS sells a 800 duckie (cheap) that's supposed to work very well with most handhelds. It also works on UHF, but of course gets progressively worse as you go lower in frequency

73 Mike

 

[kma371]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3GS: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

so i ordered it with the programing.

is there anyone out there that has a pre saved program using freescan for the sacramento/north highlands area i could have a look at? so i can start to learn how the programming works.

Freescan will import the database into your scanner if your a subscriber here. You won't have to do any programming yourself.

 

[ka3jjz]

True; but it only does part of the programming. The part that most people, myself included at first, find hard to grasp is the use of Quick Keys (system, site and group). That is something you have to figure out for yourself. To me, that is absolutely the key to understanding how DMA can be made to work for you

73 Mike

 

[kma371]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3GS: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

True; but it only does part of the programming. The part that most people, myself included at first, find hard to grasp is the use of Quick Keys (system, site and group). That is something you have to figure out for yourself. To me, that is absolutely the key to understanding how DMA can be made to work for you

73 Mike

I just group everything by county. I just quick lock out anything as I go.

Each agency is it's own system and the quick key is the county ( in alphbetical order). California only has 58 but some states have many more counties so that wouldn't work for every where.