looking for someone to program my scanner

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dabiker

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i live in alexandria,sd. I am looking for someone in the area that could program my scanners. I have a older uniden bearcat bcd396xt and I plan on buying a bcd996xt within the next month. If you are able to help me with this please contact me at kylebaas@yahoo.com. I don't watch the forum much i am on the road alot so i am not able to get online alot and not good with the forum thing u can also contact me at by phone at 605-999-2585 thanks kyle

P.S I not very good with the forum thing
 

bbtkd

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i live in alexandria,sd. I am looking for someone in the area that could program my scanners. I have a older uniden bearcat bcd396xt and I plan on buying a bcd996xt within the next month. If you are able to help me with this please contact me at kylebaas@yahoo.com. I don't watch the forum much i am on the road alot so i am not able to get online alot and not good with the forum thing u can also contact me at by phone at 605-999-2585 thanks kyle

P.S I not very good with the forum thing

I urge you to learn to program them yourself. Once you do it, it is quite easy. Since you are posting here, I presume you have a computer, and odds are that it is a Windows PC, and might have a serial port. I also presume that you have the serial programming cable that comes with the scanner. Is this true so far?

If so, then the next issue is software. There is absolutely no need to buy software. There are two good free packages to program these scanners; FreeScan (which I prefer and use) and another that I cannot recall the name. So, you would find FreeScan by googling 'freescan scannow', it should be the first link. Go to the download area, download and install it.

The next thing you really need is a paid subscription to RadioReference. This is cheap and gives you several advantages, including allowing FreeScan the ability to download county frequencies from RadioReference. This is really mandatory for trunked systems. For analog frequencies you could manually enter into FreeScan from a free radioreference printout. Your choice.

Lastly, it is curious that you say that the BCD396XT is an old scanner since it is the latest and greatest handheld from Uniden. It has only been out for 11 months. If your scanner is old, then it is likely a BCD396T, BC296D, or BC250D. If you have any of those three, you will have problems with motorboating on digital trunking systems and should perhaps trade up to a BCD396XT.

When it comes to the BCD996XT, it may not be worth the extra money it will cost unless you really need the features which make it useful when mobile, such as multi-site and GPS. If you will only use it as a base or for your local area, it will be much cheaper to get a BCD996T used on Ebay and get rid of motorboating by applying the latest firmware update. I've seen some go for as cheap as $300 but it could take months to find one as they usually sell for $350 to $450.
 

guitarbrian30

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Feb 13, 2007
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Bismarck ,ND
are you selling your older uniden unit?

You can just transfer from old to new and then sell the old unit. using that freescan software. I think that is what I heard on the uniden forum.

Sorry I would send you the files but, all I have are GRE and RS units.

I would like to get a uniden if the wife of course lets me!
 

Ronjk4

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Jun 23, 2006
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1
I Programmed my own BCD396T

I bought the Arc software and used radio reference -- my scanner is up and running. I encourage you to try it yourself. I live over near Rapid City, and it is really easy to program as long as you take a few days to learn the ropes.

I just helped a friend program his Radio Shack Scanner using the radio reference interface -- that's two of us in this area that are up and running!

Good luck
 

dabiker

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Joined
May 12, 2007
Messages
32
Location
Alexandria,sd
i am not to good at learning stuff

but i have tryed differnt software and iam not having to good of luck with it i have got that freescan now but i am waiting for my new bcd996xt to get here and ill try that one but after that i cant afford alot of pay for software.and i am hopeing that someone reading this could meet up with me and help me program these scanners and give me some advice.iam more of a hands on person if i see someone use it then i will remember it but i cant read something and remember what i read 5 minutes after i read it.its just had to find someone that will take the time to set down and show me how it is done.thanks guys for the replys
 

dabiker

Member
Joined
May 12, 2007
Messages
32
Location
Alexandria,sd
I urge you to learn to program them yourself. Once you do it, it is quite easy. Since you are posting here, I presume you have a computer, and odds are that it is a Windows PC, and might have a serial port. I also presume that you have the serial programming cable that comes with the scanner. Is this true so far?

If so, then the next issue is software. There is absolutely no need to buy software. There are two good free packages to program these scanners; FreeScan (which I prefer and use) and another that I cannot recall the name. So, you would find FreeScan by googling 'freescan scannow', it should be the first link. Go to the download area, download and install it.

The next thing you really need is a paid subscription to RadioReference. This is cheap and gives you several advantages, including allowing FreeScan the ability to download county frequencies from RadioReference. This is really mandatory for trunked systems. For analog frequencies you could manually enter into FreeScan from a free radioreference printout. Your choice.

Lastly, it is curious that you say that the BCD396XT is an old scanner since it is the latest and greatest handheld from Uniden. It has only been out for 11 months. If your scanner is old, then it is likely a BCD396T, BC296D, or BC250D. If you have any of those three, you will have problems with motorboating on digital trunking systems and should perhaps trade up to a BCD396XT.

When it comes to the BCD996XT, it may not be worth the extra money it will cost unless you really need the features which make it useful when mobile, such as multi-site and GPS. If you will only use it as a base or for your local area, it will be much cheaper to get a BCD996T used on Ebay and get rid of motorboating by applying the latest firmware update. I've seen some go for as cheap as $300 but it could take months to find one as they usually sell for $350 to $450.
what do you mean by motorboating ?
 

guitarbrian30

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Feb 13, 2007
Messages
182
Location
Bismarck ,ND
motorboating

The scanner can not decode the data. My scanners all do this on the same tower when I set them in the same location on my fridge. It sounds like garbled talk, or sputtering of a 1970's honda moped. Yeah I had one of those. :) Orr sounds like a robot talking that has a speaker wire shorting out.

Mine usually does the garbled talk around 65% and below. that is when I am connected to the sioux falls tower and it 23 miles away.

you may notice yours doing that when you are connected to the wall lake tower. What towers can you pick up. I am guessing maybe turkey ridge, mitchell, madison, and wall lake.
 

bbtkd

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The scanner can not decode the data. My scanners all do this on the same tower when I set them in the same location on my fridge. It sounds like garbled talk, or sputtering of a 1970's honda moped. Yeah I had one of those. :) Orr sounds like a robot talking that has a speaker wire shorting out.

Mine usually does the garbled talk around 65% and below. that is when I am connected to the sioux falls tower and it 23 miles away.

you may notice yours doing that when you are connected to the wall lake tower. What towers can you pick up. I am guessing maybe turkey ridge, mitchell, madison, and wall lake.

As Brian mentioned, any digital scanner will motorboat if signal is poor. Also, some Uniden scanners have firmware or design issues which yield motorboating even with a strong signal. The BCD996T does this with older firmware, and the BCD396T does this with any version of firmware, though it was improved in later versions. The BCD396XT and BCD996XT don't seem to have an issue, except probably with poor signal. So if you've got motorboating on a 396XT or 996XT or a 996T with newer firmware, then you need a better signal.
 
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