Newb in Ohio - up against a time constraint

[BuckeyeCannonball]

Good Morning!

So a friend and I are taking a road trip across the country soon and he asked me to program his scanner while he is working on other vehicle aspects. Sure! Why Not! Can't be that hard! - or so I thought. I have years of experience in CB radios, Alarms, Remote Starters, etc, so I took on the challenge, only to find out that I am no where near qualified to understand what I am doing - so far anyway.

The scanner is a Uniden BDC996P2 with GPS receiver. After talking with another friend who I think has a newer system, I was under the impression that I could just plug in the USB cord, go to a site, and download whatever I need. I doubt that's the case at this point, but I remain hopeful.

We leave in 2 weeks and I feel like I am spinning my wheels trying to go through FAQ's and Wiki's when really what would work best for me is a step by step guide, or a little hand holding for the first couple of steps until I understand what I am doing. Is there a resource like that that I am missing, or would anyone be willing to guide me through a few cycles of programming until I stop asking dumb questions?

I appreciate the knowledge on here and I will continue to look in the mean time. Thank you for your time.

-Sean.

 

[bob550]

Being a Premium Subscriber, as I see you are, is the first step as it enables you to download the necessary frequencies and systems. The next step is a suitable software program to download everything to. Although it has been discontinued and is no longer supported, I'd suggest FreeScan because as the name suggests, it's free. You can find the download here, and a user guide here. You can also find a user manual for the 996P2 at Mark's Scanners at this URL: Easier to Read BCD996P2/XT Digital Scanner Manual.

 

[hiegtx]

Good Morning!

So a friend and I are taking a road trip across the country soon and he asked me to program his scanner while he is working on other vehicle aspects. Sure! Why Not! Can't be that hard! - or so I thought. I have years of experience in CB radios, Alarms, Remote Starters, etc, so I took on the challenge, only to find out that I am no where near qualified to understand what I am doing - so far anyway.

The scanner is a Uniden BDC996P2 with GPS receiver. After talking with another friend who I think has a newer system, I was under the impression that I could just plug in the USB cord, go to a site, and download whatever I need. I doubt that's the case at this point, but I remain hopeful.

We leave in 2 weeks and I feel like I am spinning my wheels trying to go through FAQ's and Wiki's when really what would work best for me is a step by step guide, or a little hand holding for the first couple of steps until I understand what I am doing. Is there a resource like that that I am missing, or would anyone be willing to guide me through a few cycles of programming until I stop asking dumb questions?

I appreciate the knowledge on here and I will continue to look in the mean time. Thank you for your time.

-Sean.

See the short tutorial, with screenshots, in the attached *.PDF file.

The attached Road Trip zipped file is the file created using the instructions provided. To view it in FreeSCAN, open the zip file with WinZip, the free 7Zip, or other utility, and import the FreeSCAN Road Trip.996 file into the FreeSCAN program, so that you can see the contents.

I would note that if your route takes you to or through areas using DMR (such as MotoTRBO), or NXDN systems, FreeSCAN does not support those types. ProScan or ARC-XT would be needed to correctly import those into a programming file.

 

[ofd8001]

Unfortunately a 996P2, while an excellent scanner, isn't amenable to programming for a cross-country road trip. You'll probably encounter numerous statewide trunked systems that are too big to fit. You'll have to break these down into smaller sub systems, which requires knowledge of each system to do as good as possible.

If you got the funds, an SDS 100/200 or BCD 436/536 are a lot more friendly. Their memory constraints are more generous.

On the positive side you do have a GPS device which makes road trip scanning very enjoyable.