Welcome to RadioReference, I normally check this section of the forums daily and somehow missed your other topic that you made. I'll try my best giving you an introduction on Colorado scanning, try clicking on a few blue links if you want more information about individual topics. Be sure to definitely check out the
Colorado Radio Discussion Forum and ask a few (or a ton of) question as many of the users there are willing to help new people out, and they know a whole lot more than I do. There are even several relatively new posts trying to help other new users find scanners to buy.
Sadly the Uniden BCT15X will not handle
Digital (Project 25/P25) audio and therefore will not work on the
State of Colorado Digital Trunked Radio System (DTRS). Many communications all over Colorado and especially the Denver Metro area have moved towards what is known as
trunked radio system, and this can be confusing and overwhelming. While you cannot monitor locally, you can actually still listen to areas they use analog trunking systems which the BCT15X can handle. Such examples are
Denver Public Safety,
City of Aurora, and
Arvada / Westminster Public Safety. There is also the great VHF holdout known as
Boulder County.
What needs to be understood is that P25 is a standard of encoding radio traffic and requires a scanner using the same standards to decode that traffic. Your current scanner cannot do this, unless you were to perform an extremely complicated procedure known as a
discriminator tap and use a program known as
Digital Speech Decoder (DSD). All is not completely lost however, there appears to be some very limited analog frequencies still left in
Adams County, but it generally limited to basic fire department dispatches (one of which is Thornton), schools, and public works.
To actually be able to listen to most traffic in your local area, you will need to consider what are commonly called digital scanners. These are not cheap however, and can easily be $300 (on a very large sale) to $500 new. There are some that can be found in places like Craigslist and Ebay that are used for prices in the upper $200 range.
Scanners that will handle the system include:
RadioShack Pro-106 (Handheld)
RadioShack Pro-197 (Base)
RadioShack Pro-18 (Handheld)
GRE PSR-500 (Handheld)
GRE PSR-600 (Base)
GRE PSR-800 (Handheld)
Uniden BCD396XT (Handheld)
Uniden BCD996XT (Base)
Uniden HomePatrol (Base)
and a few older models that you might be able to find in the used market, but
be warned that almost all do not support 700 MHz that Adam County uses. Such models are the
Pro-96,
Pro-2096,
BC296D,
BC796D,
BCD396T (will handle 700 MHz), and
BCD996T (will handle 700 MHz)
If you just purchased your scanner, you might want to consider returning it and get a scanner that can handle DTRS, if of course it is within your price range. If you ever do plan on keeping the BCT15X, here's an
Easier to Read BCT15-X Scanner Manual that may interest you.
I hope this helps you and good luck!
