BCT8 suddenly lost ID Groups

Status
Not open for further replies.

cmprather69

Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2007
Messages
25
for reasons unknown, my beloved BCT8 has suddenly stopped scanning my programmed groups. i have two banks configured with Motorola Type 2 trunking with Control Channel Plan 1 for our local city police/fire. it was working great up until a couple of weeks ago when a buddy of mine accidentally bumped the scanner.

i have reset the scanner with powering off/powering on while holding state-2-9, and successfully wiped out the programming, then downloaded the configuration again to the scanner, but the ID groups refuse to work. i've tried manually programming/activating the ID groups, but they seem to already be there, the scanner just doesn't scan them. i've pushed the data using ARC 2.2, which is what i've always had success with.

do i just need to take this thing out to the back yard and beat it with an axe, or is there a fix? this thing has never been the most user friendly scanner out there, but once i got it working it worked for quite a while. super frustrating, any help would be most appreciated!

carl.
 
Last edited:

georgiat28

Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2006
Messages
66
Location
Goldsboro, NC
Bct8

My scanner is doing the same thing, that is the purpose of me coming to radio reference. I have had my scanner for over 2 years and all of a sudden it wont pick up any talk groups. I have worked on it for several hours but have been unsuccessful. If you find out the problem, will you please let me know or email me at georgiat28@aol.com. I will have to buy me another scanner if i cant get this one going. Any help with this would be much appreciated!
 

eaf1956

Member
Feed Provider
Joined
May 11, 2007
Messages
3,349
Location
Evansville, IN
Old Scanner

My scanner is doing the same thing, that is the purpose of me coming to radio reference. I have had my scanner for over 2 years and all of a sudden it wont pick up any talk groups. I have worked on it for several hours but have been unsuccessful. If you find out the problem, will you please let me know or email me at georgiat28@aol.com. I will have to buy me another scanner if i cant get this one going. Any help with this would be much appreciated!

Years and Years ago when UNIDEN/Bearcat dropped the 9v battery memory backup in their scanners, I bought the 1st one they put out. This is in the days of scanners like the 210XL. Anyway, that scanner would (over time) stop receiving anything. It would somehow change the FREQ that were programmed in memory. Some of the FREQ it came up with couldn't even be put into the scanner. UNIDEN tried to fix that problem apprx 3 times before I gave up trying to get it fixed. I think that was about the time UNIDEN bought out the BEARCAT line from ELECTRA. Anyway, what I would do if I were you is PAY the FLAT RATE service fee and have UNIDEN go through and FIX any problems with the scanner. Last time I used the service it was like $60 Flat rate for anything that was wrong with the scanner.
 

kayi4cle

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Aug 19, 2008
Messages
454
Location
Intermod Alley
for reasons unknown, my beloved BCT8 has suddenly stopped scanning my programmed groups. i have two banks configured with Motorola Type 2 trunking with Control Channel Plan 1 for our local city police/fire. it was working great up until a couple of weeks ago when a buddy of mine accidentally bumped the scanner.

I don’t know if this will help or not, but here it is just in case. I recall that when I had a BCT8 and was monitoring a Motorola type II system, I could only enable and disable groups when I was in Scan mode. Sometimes when I thought I was disabling banks, groups became disabled instead. Being in Search mode was the best way to disable banks, but if some groups have been accidently disabled, you will have to enable the bank where they are, get in Scan mode, and then enable the groups again. I learned this when I wasn’t hearing the PD dispatch anymore and found out I had hit the “1” for the bank, but group 1 of my trunked system is what actually got disabled.
 

cmprather69

Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2007
Messages
25
BCT8 is now taunting me

eaf1956, thanks for that info - not sure if this particular model has a battery backup inside, but it's been plugged in since i can remember...i listen to it frequently (several times a week) but know that those batteries on the inside can cause some flaky behavior, as they do with computers. i'll contact Uniden and see what they can do for me in the way of a full tuneup.

kayi4cle, that's really good info, and i have found that to be true with mine as well. not only is it a pain to try & re-enable the groups once you've disabled them (for the very reason you described, i thought i was turning off a scan bank, not a group), but it's as challenging as a video game...it seems you have to push the 1 button at just the right time to enable it again.

right now, where my scanner stands is that i am now able to listen to the police frequencies again. i'm really not sure what i did, but it's also not back to how it was before. the freq-group (1-1, for example) is just flashing while it scans. so, it's not only scanning the talk groups i have programmed, but it's a little excited and picking up a ton of other talk groups (city bus system, school bus systems, city maintenence, blah blah blah). i'm almost tempted to just leave it this way, since it does pick up the police and fire again, but i might hit the lockout button the next time a group comes up that i didn't add to the programming just to see what happens...ugh.

thanks for your responses!!!
 

kayi4cle

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Aug 19, 2008
Messages
454
Location
Intermod Alley
Sounds like you have Highway (HWY) enabled along with Private (PVT). (When you weren't hearing your stuff, you probably had JUST the Highway enabled). You can disable Highway and just listen to the stuff you programmed in. Here is the Manual that explains it better than I can! Let us know if this helps :)

http://www.uniden.com/pdf/BCT8om.pdf
 

Bullmax

Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2009
Messages
357
Location
London, ON
right now, where my scanner stands is that i am now able to listen to the police frequencies again. i'm really not sure what i did, but it's also not back to how it was before. the freq-group (1-1, for example) is just flashing while it scans. so, it's not only scanning the talk groups i have programmed, but it's a little excited and picking up a ton of other talk groups (city bus system, school bus systems, city maintenence, blah blah blah). i'm almost tempted to just leave it this way, since it does pick up the police and fire again, but i might hit the lockout button the next time a group comes up that i didn't add to the programming just to see what happens...ugh.

thanks for your responses!!!

You just need to hit the search button again when you see the 1-1 and it will put you into id scan which will only scan the id groups you have programmed in.

If you see B1 scan you need to push search until you see the id scan. Dont get too crazy on pushing the search button. Be paitent.
 
Last edited:

cmprather69

Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2007
Messages
25
Bullmax: you are a genius!

that worked! i had to push it twice, like you suggested, and it is now back to scanning normally. thank you so much for cutting through the muck that is the manual, and getting straight to the solution!
 

cmprather69

Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2007
Messages
25
fgdpos

well, that *almost* worked. i had turned it off last night when i went to bed, and turned it back on tonight to scan, and now it just blazes through the 800mhz channels, no ID scan enabled, no listening to any frequencies. more trouble than it's worth.
 

RICHPERK

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Aug 21, 2006
Messages
45
Location
COLORADO
Worst scanner ever owned, performed the latest firmware upgrade update and this thing won't trunk track and 400 mhz channels are .0125 off. I use ARC8 and still cannot get this thing to work right. Uniden support has been no help. Any suggestions?
 

Bullmax

Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2009
Messages
357
Location
London, ON
well, that *almost* worked. i had turned it off last night when i went to bed, and turned it back on tonight to scan, and now it just blazes through the 800mhz channels, no ID scan enabled, no listening to any frequencies. more trouble than it's worth.

I am actually having the same problem with mine. The id scan all of the sudden does not show and it starts to scan really fast. I turned the scanner off, then back on and the id scan was there and all was well. It seems to be doing this a couple of times a day now. Also have a BCT8.

What system are you listening to?
 

cmprather69

Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2007
Messages
25
fixed...again

@ georgiat28: i can recommend emailing you the file i'm using in Arc to try out - i will say that resetting the scanner (turning it off, holding State, 2 and 9 while turning it on) and pushing one bank at a time (for just two banks at this point, my two trunked banks) has mostly worked at this point. when i turn it off, i do have to hit Search to get it away from B1 or just flashing the 1-1. i'm not sure why it's JUST started doing this after a year+ of working fine, but whatever...

@ RICHPERK: same offer to send you the Arc file - it might not help with your particular frequencies, but you could see how i have it programmed...

@ Bullmax: it's a Motorolla Type 2 800mhz system...

again, at this point, i have it back in the game, with the odd exception of having to *sometimes* his the Search button to get it away from 1-1 flashing / B1 scan...most odd.

i'm interested in this Firmware Update i've heard a few people talk about, does anyone have any specific information on it, or should i just dig around in Uniden's website?

thanks!!!

c-
 

UPMan

In Memoriam
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Apr 19, 2004
Messages
13,296
Location
Arlington, TX
The first link is to a VHF system and the 2nd is to an EDACS system, neither of which would be affected by Rebanding in such a way that firmware would matter. Also, I don't believe there is any mandate for Canada to implement rebanding at all.
 

Bullmax

Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2009
Messages
357
Location
London, ON
The first link is to a VHF system and the 2nd is to an EDACS system, neither of which would be affected by Rebanding in such a way that firmware would matter. Also, I don't believe there is any mandate for Canada to implement rebanding at all.

Ok thanks a lot. I just wished I had asked this question long ago as I have wasted quite a bit of time on it.
 

Bullmax

Member
Joined
Oct 18, 2009
Messages
357
Location
London, ON
well, that *almost* worked. i had turned it off last night when i went to bed, and turned it back on tonight to scan, and now it just blazes through the 800mhz channels, no ID scan enabled, no listening to any frequencies. more trouble than it's worth.

cmprather69, are you still having this problem? I am having this problem as well. I set it to id scan and it works fine for a few hours. Out of the blue I won't hear anything on the scanner. It automatically goes off the id scan and just says scan. It looks like its scanning at 4 times the speed it should be scanning. Although it still picks up the EDACS system I have programmed in. I hope someone has a solution. This just started happening over the past week. It has been working fine for the last 4 months or so.
 

cmprather69

Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2007
Messages
25
still broken, not fixed

Bullmax, i'm still having the problem and now after i've sat with the scanner for a half hour or so, i realize that it's doing the very thing you described. id scan simply won't stay active.

if anyone has any information on this, it would be super helpful. this scanner is on death row.

c-
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top