So I programmed Midland County into my Uniden BCD396T. For some reason I am not hearing traffic (I know there is traffic).
Any tips? This system is not trunked is it? Can someone give me a basic compare and contrast of the following terms.
P25
Digital
Trunked Digital
Hi rrs
Which part of "Midland County" are you trying to program? Looking at the database
page for the county, it appears that the county Sheriff's office is mostly P25 (digital), but is not currently trunked. For your BCD396T, you'd enter those frequencies in a Conventional system. Do not use a trunked system like Motorola or EDACS. There are NAC codes listed, but the 396T is not set up to use those. (The 396XT can, also the 996XT, and several other scanners, but not the 396T nor the 996T.)
For the 396T, you'd create a new system as Conventional, then enter the frequencies you want in a group. For each frequency that has a NAC code, instead of a CTCSS (PL) tone or DCS code, make sure that you set the field labeled for the tone/code to "Off", not to "Search" or to any value. If you have it as "Search", the scanner will ignore digital transmissions, and instead wait for an analog (non-digital) signal, so that it can search for a tone or code. Sheriff Ops1 is a good example. It shows a frequency of 158.9250, and a NAC setting of 165. You ignore the NAC on the 396T.
For Midland (city), it appears that most of their communications are on this EDACS trunked system:
Midland Public Safety Trunking System, Midland, Texas - Scanner Frequencies
This one, of course, is programmed as a trunked system, and for EDACS, you must enter all the system frequencies in the correct LCN position.
Another trunked system in that area is this one:
Permian Basin Regional Interoperability Network Trunking System, Midland, Texas - Scanner Frequencies
Odessa is on it, though most of their talkgroups appear to be encrypted. Midland S.O. has a talkgroup on there, but it is a patch to their Vhf dispatch channel, according to the notes.
Attached is a FreeSCAN file for that area. If you don't have FreeSCAN, you can get it
here. (Click on the download link.)
The file is zipped. Most newer windows versions (Windows 7, Vista) will extract the FreeSCAN file from the zipped file (if you download the zipped file, then right-click on it, see if you show "extract" as an option on the pop-up menu.) The programming file name is
Midland area 396T.996
You can also use a file utility such as WinZip or 7-Zip. 7-Zip is free, and be downloaded
here.
Once you have the extracted file on your pc, connect the pc to the scanner with the programming cable you should have received with the scanner, then use FreeSCAN to open the file and send it to the scanner. You can find the user guide for FreeScan in the Wiki:
FreeScan User Guide - The RadioReference Wiki