Need help getting started

[scanner90]

I just bought a Uniden BC246t scanner as my first scanner. I'm trying to program channels and am getting confused. I downloaded bc-tool as the uniden software didn't seem very good.

From BCtool I went to tools>radioreference>paste system
I then went to this page http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=604 and copied the table for "King County Police Talkgroups"

When I went to paste it into BCtool it wouldn't work, finally I realized that according to the RR chart this systems is "Motorola Type II SmartZone" which is not on the BCtool list.

I live on Vashon Island, WA and am most interested in listening to King County sheriff(I believe precinct 4)
but after I figure everything out I plan to program all king county codes and Police/sheriff for all of WA state.

I'm pretty good with technology but am having trouble with this, this is my first scanner and only knowledge is some researching before I bought it. I'd really appreciate a hand.

 

[scanner90]

I instead downloaded Freescan which seems to work better.

I copied the king county sheriff talkgroup info it and loaded it into the scanner. When I scroll through systems on the scanner "King County PD" shows up as a system but when I try to scan just that system it says "nothing to scan" instead of scanning through the talk groups.

However I was able to easily copy WSP frequencies into freescan, load them onto the scanner and scan.
It seems like I'm just having problems with trunked systems.

 

[ka3jjz]

Hi Scanner90 - you are missing one piece here; you need to purchase a premium subscription to copy stuff from the database - it's quite cheap...

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/subscription/

Alternately, you can go to the Washington forum, and ask if someone already has a BCTool file for your area. Another route would be to ask if someone has a UASD (Uniden Advanced System Director) file that you can use to import.

There are also other sources; specifically the Washington state scanner Yahoo group, as well as the famous Intercept NW bulletin board. In addition, there's a Yahoo group for BCTool where there's several folks familiar with that software. Unfortunately, poor Rob has been buried by his real work, so he hasn't gotten around to getting a new version out the door - but the 1.4 beta version (which I hope you have gotten from the website) is pretty good nevertheless.

I'll get those URLs for those sites in a moment....73 Mike

[edit] OK here we go - before I begin, anything underlined or in blue, either here or in our wiki, is a link. I see you downloaded FreeScan. We host FreeScan's user manual in our wiki...

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/FreeScan_User_Guide

Once you got your subscription, you will be able to download data (trunking included) from the database. There is a section in the user manual that describes this. You don't need to use EZ Grab for this; the database download will set up much (but not all) of what you will need. It's important to note that once you have built your groups, not only do you need to assign a quick key, you must enable it as well (that's a step a lot of folks forget to do, and it gets them confused). That's one of the causes of the 'Nothing to Scan' message - there's more of that description here...

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Nothing_to_Scan

By the way FreeScan has its own forums on the same site where you got the software - please post questions about that software there, as it's much more likely to be answered quickly.

Now onto the other links - Washington state scanning, where you could also pick up either FreeScan or UASD files...

http://www.northwestradio.net/bbs/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WashingtonScan/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nwscan/

and this article has all things 246 related. Down in the Related pages section, I highly recommend reading - and saving - the Easier To Read manual...

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/BC246T

Feel free to ask lots of questions about the 246 in our Uniden forum. Lots of folks there can help you over the hurdles.

 

[scanner90]

Without the premium membership can't I just copy/paste the info from the table.

As I said, I did this for WSP, which uses regular frequencies, and they went into freescan fine and I can listen to them.

I followed the same procedure for king county sheriff talk groups and they seemed to go into freescan ok but on the radio, the system(king county PD) shows up but it doesn't look like the actual talkgroups went through because when I try to scan "King County PD" it simply says "nothing to scan".

Thanks

 

[Dubbin]

Hi Scanner90 - you are missing one piece here; you need to purchase a premium subscription to copy stuff from the database - it's quite cheap...

Since when do you have to pay to copy the information? I don't think you are reading what he is saying.

 

[cpuerror]

"Nothing to scan" usually means something is either not enabled or just locked out. If you have a system or group that is locked out, it will show up as red in FreeSCAN. Beyond that, select Tools * System Quick Key Editor, click on All On, and then reupload to your scanner.

In the upload dialog box, just make sure "Send System Quick Key Status" is selected before you upload. You should then be able to scan the system.

The other possibility is that you have overlooked programming in the trunk frequencies, which would cause the same thing.

 

[scanner90]

figured out the problem.
In freescan, there is nothing in the "Trunk Frequency" tab.
Where do I get the codes to put in this tab? The tables in the database appear to only have the codes to put in the TGID column in the freescan table.

 

[ka3jjz]

If by 'codes' you mean 'frequencies' that's listed in the 'System Frequencies' entry (above where you got the talkgroup IDs). Although I've never done this, evidently you can use EZ Grab to pull those freqs into the Trunk Frequencies tab. Ignore the LCN entries; they apply only to EDACS and LTR systems, not Motorola.

You will likely need to build a system for each site you wish to use, as the 246 cannot handle more than 1 site in a system. If you use Control channel only, you would only need the red/blue frequencies. If the site doesn't have these marked you will need to put in all the freqs for that site.
That option is found in the 'Site' tab. Ignore the Startup key, APCO mode and threshold - these don't apply to the 246. Set the system type to 'Motorola 800 Mhz Standard Type II' via the pulldown. In the Trunk System Setup screen, make sure the system type is 'Mot Type II / P25' and you have enabled the quick keys for your talkgroups (just click on the box so that a checkmark shows up in it). After that, you should pretty much be good to go.

If you don't know which site(s) are closest to you, drop a query on the Washington forum. No doubt they can point you in the right direction

73 Mike