Announcing the BCD396XT and BC346XT Scanners

[Eng74]

How many tone outs do you need? You know, depending on the frequencies, there may be a compromise. Say that four of the toneouts are as follows:

Fire Station/Department A
A: 346.7 CZ, B: 582.1 HZ

Fire Station/Department B
A: 346.7 CZ, B: 384.6 DZ

Fire Station/Department C
A: 346.7 CZ, 524.8 GZ

Fire Station/Department D
A: 346.7 CZ, B: 473.2 FZ

I would try to set the tone out for just Tone A 346.7. You may get falsing on occasion, but it might be worth a try. I think the key here is knowing how many total tone outs you would like and then doing a list and seeing if any of them share any tones in common. If I recall correctly, because of how these were set up originally, it is fairly common for fire departments in the same county to share one of the tones in some cases. Please let us know if this works. You may have to experiment with the timing on this. I believe the Tone A is usually just a few seconds at most. I think that the long tone B is more common for all calls, etc.

If I wanted to run the whole county I would need 66 spots, 55 spots if I just run the stations, BC's and the all call. It would be nice to be able to break it down into the 7 Battalions and be able to turn them on or off like a group. I just have to down load a seperate set for whichever Battalion I might be in with the way it is now.
The system we have is a new system, it has been in use for about two years now and is set up where the A tone for each station in a Battalion is the same and then the B tones are different but are reused in all of the Battalion again.

Station 64
Tone A 1321.2
Tone B 410.8

Station 74
Tone A 1357.6
Tone B 410.8

We had went from a 2+2 tone system that was in use for many many years. Everyone pretty much knew when the tones started who's call it was. The 1+1 system it is harder to tell them apart maybe with time but it is nice to use the 396 or a 330 as a pager out of the station.

 

[rdale]

You can then use 7 A-tones and get each battalion if you leave the B blank.

 

[DaveNF2G]

What is the point of having tone-out for every station on the frequency? Why not just leave the radio sitting on the channel in manual mode if you want to hear all of the calls?

 

[Eng74]

What is the point of having tone-out for every station on the frequency? Why not just leave the radio sitting on the channel in manual mode if you want to hear all of the calls?

It would be great to be able to set up the Fire Tone Out as a system and then be able to break it down into groups and then use a group for each Battalion. I just wish they would have taken the Tone Out to the next step. By being able to do tone decode with the radio is a great step but some more slots for them would have been a much bigger step to me.

 

[rdale]

What is the point of having tone-out for every station on the frequency? Why not just leave the radio sitting on the channel in manual mode if you want to hear all of the calls?

...and if you leave it on toneout search, it will only alert on calls and not casual chatter.

 

[scannersnstuff]

although i'm not totally 100 % positive about the fire tone out question,here is my educated opinion.although uniden or for that matter motorola may be able to have more than 10 tone out spot's in their equipment,it may not be feasable for the "scan" to cycle fast enough to alway's catch the entire two tone sequence.remember uniden use's the caveat to the effect of the fire tone out function should not be used as your primary mean's of alerting you to emergency call's <wording not exact>. my motorola minitor v has 8 tone set's in place.there is also a switch position to alert only on 1 tone set.yes,i do have to say there are time's the thing drive's me crazy.for what it's worth,i have never missed an alert with either my minitor or with the uniden's.my two way radio shop guy was impressed that a scanner could do that !.
anyone have any thought's on the subject ?.

in reading the post's since i posted,my other thought is,fire tone out is usefull if you don't want to listen to everything in open channel. <i.e.> your county fire paging frequency also does ems paging,and you have no interest in listening to routine ems call's.

 

[Jay911]

I work for a volunteer FD and dispatch for several dozen others, and I can't fathom why you would want to store all their tone alerts for simultaneous use in one scanner. Like Dave said, if you want to hear all the departments, leave your radio in scan mode...

 

[slicerwizard]

I figure that there has to be a way to insure that things like selectivity and sensitivity are as good as they can possibly be.

When you can guarantee that oh, 100,000 buyers will pony up for a premium model, Uniden will listen.

 

[Viper43]

You may not get it but others do, I wish the scanner had more than ten FTO slots, I could use 100 in, say 20 FTO slots per bank that I can turn on and off depending on where I'm at as I use FTO when I can't just listen to the scanner. I use FTO a lot when I'm in places I can't have the scanner chatter going. Having FTO search is fine when I'm home doing nothing, but when working it's not helpful to get ever toneout for EMS, fire/EMS officers and so forth when all I want to hear is wether theres a big fire or wreck that I have to go on for a paper. If I'm shooting at social event or sports event I don't need to hear anything except the fire tones.

And I did mention this a couple times to Upman in the past that more than 10 slots are needed, 10 won't even cover the county I live in with 12 fire stations, let alone the surrounding larger counties, one of which has 28 fire stations I believe.

V

I work for a volunteer FD and dispatch for several dozen others, and I can't fathom why you would want to store all their tone alerts for simultaneous use in one scanner. Like Dave said, if you want to hear all the departments, leave your radio in scan mode...

 

[davidmc36]

Hey UPMan:

Any plans to include bluetooth interface for communicatiing with bluetooth GPS recievers to the new handheld scanners? If that was there I would buy one in a second.

 

[KE4ZNR]

Hey UPMan:

Any plans to include bluetooth interface for communicatiing with bluetooth GPS recievers to the new handheld scanners? If that was there I would buy one in a second.

Not on the 396xt...and since it does not have it you know the 346 will not either...maybe something for the future!
Marshall KE4ZNR

 

[KB9LIQ]

I too would love it to have bluetooth. This will be the first scanner I've bought in about ten years and it looks like it will be worth it. Got any idea when the release will be yet?

 

[rdale]

Release date is still listed in the very first post of this thread.

It will not have Bluetooth.

 

[davidmc36]

How do you know it won't have BT. Unless it is in manufacture, anything could be added.

The release date was pretty vauge.

 

[shell6]

I know that it's kind of annoying for us to keep on asking but "early 2009" is EXTREMELY vague. It would be nice if we could at least know if it's going to be Q1 or Q2.

 

[wlmr]

Quite a few messages back UPMAN stated that the new scanner could do priority scan on Motorola analog trunked system talkgroups. I understand the existing 396T cannot follow digital P25 trunking systems that are using priority talkgroups. Is this capability still missing on the 396XT?

Update to earlier post:

Followed the link for the 396XT manual and it seems to indicate that priority scanning is available for P25 digital trunking systems. (Kinda got lost within the links in the manual so not positive.)

Is there a yes, no, or "we're working on it" answer available yet on this question?

Thanks

 

[UPMan]

Yes, Priority ID Scanning is an option for P25 systems.

http://info.uniden.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Standard_P25_Trunked_Systems

 

[rdale]

How do you know it won't have BT. Unless it is in manufacture, anything could be added.

The featureset has been listed.

 

[DonS]

How do you know it won't have BT. Unless it is in manufacture, anything could be added.

The documents submitted to the FCC don't mention intentional radiation in the Bluetooth frequency range. Either it doesn't do Bluetooth, or Uniden is trying to pull a fast one. I highly doubt the latter.

 

[KE4ZNR]

The documents submitted to the FCC don't mention intentional radiation in the Bluetooth frequency range. Either it doesn't do Bluetooth, or Uniden is trying to pull a fast one. I highly doubt the latter.

Geez louise people...NO BLUETOOTH...who knows down the road but the 396xt will not have bluetooth of any kind unless you take a blue marker and color one of your own teeth in your mouth..can we move on to the next question please?
Happy Monitoring!
Marshall KE4ZNR