Going on a road trip, would like to use my Uniden Bearcat BCD996P2 along the way.

[theotherjfk]

Hello, I am a police officer and am taking a road trip in a few weeks and would like to moniter my Bearcat scanner along the way. Currently I use it primarily in the car while out on patrol and have all my neighboring jurisdictions and fire/ems channels programmed into it. Currently I just use a 800mhz antenna attached to the unit and the unit is secured to the passenger headrest via carabiners and para-cord (if I drove the same car every day I'd probably do a more complete set up, but alas I do not but this works fairly well). I also have a radio reference account and use freescan to make programming easier.

Basically I would like to monitor law enforcement/ems/public safety channels as well as department of transportation channels. Does anyone have any recommendations for gear to get (for example will I need a GPS Receiver if I am going to have so many channels programmed in?) and how to go about logistically programming the thing.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

 

[marksmith]

The Uniden puck is probably as good as any in GPS. Remember you will need another lighter plug for GPS power.

Don’t know where you are going but if you build your file with Freescan downloaded from RR, it should include the coordinates needed. You just need to pick the systems and frequencies along your trip.

While I have that radio, I don't use it with GPS, favoring the HP2 or x36 radios with the database already there. Have heard some issues with big files and GPS in that radio. You might want to put different trip segments in different quick keys and help the scanner narrow down the data.

There is a recent thread on that here in the forum related to gps and that radio.

536/436/ws1095/996p2/996xt/325p2/396xt/psr800/396t/HP-1/HP-2 & others

 

[ofd8001]

Before the 536 scanner, I used a 996XT for road trips. That's the older sibling to the 996P2.

It did the job nicely, but programming was a chore. There were many new systems to be created and programmed. Unfortunately the x96 line of scanners doesn't lend itself to programming large statewide systems because of absolute memory limits. One gets around that by breaking down those large systems into regions. For example, I had Illinois broken down into three regions.

It was also more efficient to set System Quick Keys up by state. As I entered a given state, I would enable all the System Quick Keys for that state, disabling those for the state I just left. From there the GPS device would "do its thing" with respect to refining exactly what should be on given my location.

Most any GPS device that is NEMA compliant at 4800 baud will work. I've used a couple different Garmin eTrex units "back in the day". Currently I'm using the Uniden GPS device and am very happy with it.

(If you get the Uniden "puck" resist the temptation to cut the 12V plug off and wire direct into something like the fuse box. There is something in the plug that steps down the voltage and you'll ruin the GPS device.)