Hello all, and let me be the first to admit...Man, did I step in it or what?
...
I look forward to learning from you all.
Gap
Gap, welcome to Radio Reference. You will find a lot of people here who are quite willing to help anyone who makes a reasonable effort to be civil. The 396 is a very popular model, and an excellent choice for many areas of the country. Unfortunately I don't have a 396 and don't live anywhere near you, so I can't be of great help to you on the specifics of your scanner or area, but there should be plenty of other Radio Reference members who can. I can make some more general comments.
Don't be embarrassed about being new to things. There is so much change occurring in the scanner industry that even people with 20 or more years of experience in it sometimes realize that they need to learn something new. I've used scanners for over 35 years and am still learning a lot, both in the technology and in the listening.
You will need some patience, but that can be very rewarding. Realize that there are no deadlines, and that you don't need to learn everything at once. With a little help, you should be able to start enjoying your scanner within a few hours. As you gain experience, you will find many opportunities to customize your setup more toward your own personal preferences. There is no single right or wrong way to set up a scanner. It depends greatly on what is important to you.
You've got quite a challenge in some respects. The 396 is a very powerful, yet also rather complex scanner. I read Dick's reply, which was clearly meant with good intentions, and felt sorry for you when I realized what that message must look like to someone who is new to the hobby. It would be pretty overwhelming.
35 years ago, it used to be quite simple to get started with scanning.
You bought a scanner and maybe half a dozen or so crystals to go with it, and could be listening within half an hour. You could go years without having to change anything inside the scanner. Things are a lot more complicated now, and more of the key details are specific to the local systems you want to listen to. Some of this information is readily available within the Radio Reference databases and forums. Other things are harder to figure out, such as that a particular mountain might be likely to block a signal in your area, or that a transition of radio transmission systems is in progress and not yet reflected in the databases here.
Modern scanners like the 396 are quite a bit more complicated to initially set up than the older ones were. If you have a computer and some basic skills (which I assume you do, if you're posting here), you might find it well worth the cost to get some programming software specific to the 396. This can make it much easier to do the initial and ongoing setup. Although it is possible to do the setup manually without a computer, many people find it extremely tedious to do it by hand. It seems widely agreed that it is well worth the money to get some good scanner programming software. This will pay large dividends as you modify your setup over time.
Perhaps the best suggestion at this point is to try to find someone local to you who is willing to help you with your questions, and help with the first-time setup of your 396. If you look at the Ohio part of the Radio Reference forums, you might be able to spot another member who lives in your general area and appears to be using a 396. If so, you might send them a private message asking if they would be willing to help you get started, or if they can point you to a local scanner club. You might also look to see if there are any Yahoo groups specific to scanning in your area.
If you don't see anything obvious there, you might post a message in the Ohio forums asking for anyone near <city> interested in helping you get started with a 396 to send you a private message with contact information.
Of course you can also post your questions here. If your questions are along the lines of understanding a concept or feature, you're likely to get good advice here. The Ohio forum is likely a better place to ask questions about particular frequencies or talkgroups to listen to, what codes and other terms mean, etc.
Thanks to the Radio Reference database and modern scanner programming software, people outside of your area might be able to give you some general advice on how to get started, but it really helps to find someone in your local area, because there are numerous local quirks that are likely not apparent in the database postings. Even once you start hearing conversations, you might need help in how to interpret the terms they use, for example. These often vary from city to city.
It would be helpful if you would give some thought to the types of things you are interested in listening to. For example, do you want to listen to police calls, fire calls, medical calls, trains, planes, weather, (some) ham radio, car races, snow plow operators, highway repair crews, ...? The answers to those questions (and which cities, etc. are of interest) will influence how you set things up.
One of the great things about this hobby is that it can be great fun to just explore. As you learn more, you might stumble upon things like stakeout teams for a drug sting or speed traps or arson investigations in progress. The 396 has the ability to tell you if you are close to signals that might not be advertised anywhere, making it easier to find new sources of interesting information. It can be a lot of fun to try to figure out what those are and how they are used.
One thing that would help both you and the rest of us is if you would start keeping a notebook. Write a list of questions you have, even if you're not sure of the right words to use. Keep track of the things that are confusing to you. Lists like that can help someone else more efficiently help you. (It's sometimes hard to help someone if you don't have a good understanding of what they currently know or don't know. You don't want to insult their intelligence but at the same time don't want to frustrate them by assuming they understand a concept or process that they may not yet know.) Lists like that can also give others great ideas for how to improve the scanner manuals, tutorials on this site, etc. As you learn more you can hopefully contribute to this documentation.
When writing any sort of technical documntation, one of the hardest things for the author is to forget what they already know. It's far too easy to assume that the reader already knows a key concept. One of the ways you can help is to point out cases where existing documentation makes assumptions like that, uses confusing terminology, or otherwise does something that's frustrating to a new user. Feedback from Radio
Reference members has significantly influenced manuals for several scanners in just the last year or so.
Likewise, the frequency database on this site didn't appear by magic. It is based on the cumulative contributions of thousands of Radio Reference members and a large number of "behind the scenes" volunteers. As you learn more, please do your part to help keep improving the accuracy of this database. The correct data is constantly changing, and is almost impossible to keep accurate without the contributions of people from each different locality. Anything you can do to help keep it accurate will make it easier for future members to go through the same experience you're going through now.
