Probably the most frustrating thing is getting a new radio and not being able to hear anything with it! Once you can get SOMETHING programmed into your scanner you will be much happier! Worry about all the fine tuning and organizational stuff a little later as you have time and gain an understanding of your scanner.
You cannot always expect to hear much with what is pre-programmed in the BCT15X. I bought mine a year ago and it shows a 2009 copyright at start up. That is long enough ago that there may have been a lot of changes. I never heard beans with mine set to WA state that I remember.
Start looking into programming your scanner with software. Freescan is a good place to start (and often end) for software and it is as you may have guessed, free! I tried out most all the available software and ended up paying for Proscan. It's layout just appealed to me more than the others. I can find my way around easier with it than the others. I did not care for the Wiki help files for Freescan.
I also bought the book for the Easier To Read Unden XT Manual. I much prefer it to just having a PDF file to read.
I also pay for the subscription to RadioReference. Conventional frequencies are pretty easy to manually program into the scanner if there are only a few to do. Trunking systems would be a major pain to manually program and you would already need to have a very good knowledge of how to do it.
