Latest on Best Practices with new BCD436HP

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ApexMark

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First time poster, new user, somewhat new scanner enthusiast, soon to be new owner of BCD436HP (tomorrow!)

I've buried myself in as many threads & YouTube vids about this unit as I can handle, almost to the point of discouragement. There are certainly many vocal critics. Thankfully, there are also voices of moderation, so I'm foraging ahead.

I would like to enumerate the "best practices," as it were, in order to get more mileage out of this unit re: the LCD dimming issue as well as the RTC. Here is what I've gleaned:

1. Use Low brightness whenever possible, Medium if necessary, never High if it can be helped. One forum post which stuck in my mind was the word "mitigate," as in sticking to the lower brightnesses will delay the dimming problem.

2. Immediately charge the unit 50 hours to charge up the onboard battery which holds the RTC, and try not to go a week without having the unit plugged in, so as to keep this battery going. Alternatively, accept the fact that Date/Time stamp will not be part of the file names for recorded sessions. I most definitely plan to make heavy use of recordings, and I am a bit dismayed if indeed I have to go to lengths like this to keep timestamps in the session name. (I want timestamps there, as it is part of the excitement for me to know when something happened). As I understand it, a later firmware update puts an ID in the recorded session name if it cannot get the time from the RTC.

Those are the two main problems which I keep coming across. I hopefully break it out of its box tomorrow afternoon or evening, so I'm trying to get my ducks in a row ahead of time. I've already got Sentinel installed via Winebottler on my Mac, with some Favorites built up. I've got a higher class, larger SD card waiting to take the native card's place. I've got a Radio Shack telescoping antenna as well as the RS 800MHz antenna waiting to replace the standard one.

I know there are similar threads as this but I also wanted to introduce myself. This is my first scanner since I bought my Pro-43 in 1993. Where I live in the Triangle area of North Carolina I can't get much in the way of Fire/Police/EMT - they are mostly digital and trunked, so I'm suffering sleepless nights waiting for this new unit to arrive!

Thanks,
Mark
 

ApexMark

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p.s. That was meant to be more of a question than a statement (i.e., "is there anything I'm missing").

For reference:

The best thread summarizing the LED display issue, from which comes the recommendation to not use the High brightness setting:

http://forums.radioreference.com/uniden-tech-support/315481-replacing-battery-circuit-crt.html

The best thread, started by UPMan, discussing how to at least initially get around the RTC issue, with the initial charge:

http://forums.radioreference.com/uniden-tech-support/282558-bcdx36hp-losing-clock-setting.html

The post by UPMan on 8/15 acknowledging they have a fix for the display problem but the parts "have a long lead time," so it will be a couple of months:

http://forums.radioreference.com/2439984-post55.html


For now, my personal decision is I want the features of this scanner and am willing to deal with leaving the display off the brightest setting and working around the naming of recorded sessions if the RTC gets dropped (if indeed that is the only ramification, and one isn't prompted needlessly or other things occur). For now.

Mark
 

Voyager

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If those were questions, and answer is yes.

You summed things up very well.
 

ApexMark

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Apex, NC
Backlight in USB mass storage on high

Unless I missed a setting, the backlight must remain on high the entire time the unit is connected with a USB cable in mass storage mode.
 

Ensnared

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Don't Send In?

I don't understand. If you are experiencing fading or clock issues, don't send in for repair? I am assuming you are saying wait until we are setup to deal with this problem, right?
 
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