Looking for help learning to program 996t

[evilgriff]

I ordered a new 996t, should be coming today. Ordered arc software and became a premium member here. I have been looking at the online manual for the scanner and the programming seems difficult to me. I am looking to program NJSP and Morris County local to get started. I did not want to order it preloaded, I figured I would need to learn it anyway. I am wondering if anyone would like to meet sometime to go over the basics.
I am in Randolph, NJ and have varied work schedule and am willing to travel. If I could just understand the theory, then I will probably be able to go from there.
Thanks,
Steve

 

[kenisned]

I ordered a new 996t, should be coming today. Ordered arc software and became a premium member here. I have been looking at the online manual for the scanner and the programming seems difficult to me. I am looking to program NJSP and Morris County local to get started. I did not want to order it preloaded, I figured I would need to learn it anyway. I am wondering if anyone would like to meet sometime to go over the basics.
I am in Randolph, NJ and have varied work schedule and am willing to travel. If I could just understand the theory, then I will probably be able to go from there.
Thanks,
Steve

I live close by, and I have the 996 scanner. Before you go and actually sit with somone, this is what I would suggest.

Get the scanner, play with it, USE the arc software. It's really very simple if you use the computer to program it.

You will have a greater chance to understand it, if you first figure out what you don't understand (huH?)

LOL... what I mean is, you will get more out of it if you've experimented and worked with the scanner first.

First piece of advice: Forget all that you know about "banks". There are "systems" now (as many as 100 systems). Each system has 10 "groups".

 

[evilgriff]

Scanner came today. It was practically worthless out of the box. I then found out my computer did not have the right port on it for the programming cable, but my old laptop did. Arc software said it needed windows xp, laptop had windows 98. Figured what the hell, load it and see what happens. Guess what- it loaded- hooked the computer up to the scanner and was able to control it through the software. I have a BC785 with Digital card which I have been using for years, I was able to get it to work but never really understood it. Eventually I got that programmed enough for all of the things I was interested in. This scanner seems even harder-probably because it has more choices. Too bad there is not a course somewhere to take to learn it. So far, problems I have had were that when I loaded the few local channels to practice, when it was done loading the entire country began to scan even though I told it to only upload the 3 groups I attempted. I guess I will need to unload all of the preloaded channels first and start clean. And I am trying to forget about "banks". I want to give you guys out there some credit for knowing this as well as you do-scanners are really getting much more difficult to use than before.