Official BCD396T Discussion Thread (Pre-release)

[johnvassel]

As it should. Tone out should require a dedicated feed or you miss the tone out, and what good is that?

IYou want dedicated TO? But a Minitor pager (which will do more than one set of tones - especially the IIIs and IVs that will do up to 7 calls). You want dedicated SAME? Buy a WX receiver. Both will add up to less than the cost of adding the second RX to a scanner. More over, you can use all three at the same time. Even your second RX won't allow that!

Joe M.

I use a seperate radio for each function, but where are you getting your minitors for less than half the cost of the 396? Just bought a batch of six, cost of 325 each, and that's one frequency only. no stored voice.
I've always valued seperate radios, can have all going at once, not worrying about what you might be missing. When I weather spot, I've almost run out of room to clip all the handhelds, mobile is on, and usually in contact with the wife via nextel while she eyeballs the doppler.


john

 

[safetyobc]

I am still pushing for a temporary lockout feature. You can either lockout the channel for a selected time or until power off/on, or lockout permanently. That is my one and only request. I hate locking out a channel due to heavy interferance or lots of meaningless chatter and then days later discovering that I did that and missing lots of action on the channel. For instance when multiple departments use the same freq for toneouts and they test their pagers once a day/week/month whatever the case may be. Just hit lockout and 15 minutes later it unlocks, or power off and back on and it is unlocked. Just my .02

 

[DaveIN]

I don't think you will see this on the 396.

 

[1080iAddict]

You would also need a second processor, well, let's face it - an entire second radio minus the display, audio amp, speaker, and batteries. It would be at least 50% larger
Joe M.

I am only half serious when I am talking about adding a second board and I KNOW it aint happening in the next 2 or 3 years...but... remember those suitcase sized cellular phones of 15 years ago and now 15 years later the Motorola razor phone? I think adding the functionality I proferred could happen as we move forward in time without a size or cost increase.

You are right, though, that having a second radio or third radio for a dedicated channel is the way to go. After all, it is a 'scanner' which implies by its very name that it wants to scan.

 

[Voyager]

Good point. As for the sampling delay, I wasn't necessarily asking for a second receiver board... maybe a method to adjust the delay timing for the WX scan priority.... maybe they can't do it, but wanted to leave a suggestion.

To speed up the sampling to where it would work reliably with SAME, you would have to sample so often that you would never hear much of anything else. It's already a pain to use the WX priority, there have been many complaints about the sample window, and it's nowhere close to fast enough to decode SAME. I would say about one hit in 100.

Joe M.

 

[Voyager]

You want dedicated TO? But a Minitor pager (which will do more than one set of tones - especially the IIIs and IVs that will do up to 7 calls).

I use a seperate radio for each function, but where are you getting your minitors for less than half the cost of the 396? Just bought a batch of six, cost of 325 each, and that's one frequency only. no stored voice.

Min IIs: $20-$200

http://search-completed.ebay.com/Mi...0QQfposZ15690QQfsopZ1QQfsooZ1QQfclZ3QQfrppZ50

Min IIIs: Same range:
http://search-completed.ebay.com/Mi...oZ20QQsbrftogZ1QQsofocusZbsQQsorefinesearchZ1

Even Min IVs:
http://search-completed.ebay.com/Mi...oZ20QQsbrftogZ1QQsofocusZbsQQsorefinesearchZ1

That said, I've picked up some of each for $50 or less.

Joe M.

 

[jrjarna]

OK on the SAME.... I like the temp lockout suggestion too...maybe FUNC + L/O to do temp lockout till powerdown???? hmmmmm. I just hope they can make it "go to 11"

I can' t wait to get a 396.... Hopefully FCC type acceptance will come soon?


Jason
N4TPQ

"I am a people person dammit, can't you see that I have social skills" from Office Space

 

[Voyager]

OK on the SAME.... I like the temp lockout suggestion too...maybe FUNC + L/O to do temp lockout till powerdown???? hmmmmm. I just hope they can make it "go to 11"

8)

A better way might be to have the L/O button short press for nuisance delete and hold for a full second for standard lockout. As is standard, have the nuisance delete reset on either power cycle or scan cycle.

Joe M.

 

[UPMan]

Updated Specification

After consulting with the software engineers last week, we arrived at a couple of enhancements to the original specification:

# Channels increased from 5,500 to 6,000 (Max, actual will depend on alpha tagging and other features used).

# Total Systems increased to 400.

p

 

[safetyobc]

Keep the good news coming!!!!!!

 

[Admin0140434]

Re: Updated Specification

# Channels increased from 5,500 to 6,000

good, i was worried i would run out of space due to all the talkgroups montgomery co uses

# Total Systems increased to 400

from what? was it 100? if so... thats a hell of a jump, but good news none the less

 

[1080iAddict]

Any update on the release date?

 

[W4KRR]

I hope the 396 will address two very important things:

The proposed 800 MHz rebanding, and 700 MHz trunking.

Very few people seem to realize that once 800 MHz is rebanded, most Trunk tracking scanners will no longer work on Motorola systems.

And, 700 MHz trunking is coming soon. And when it does, agencies will be flocking there.

 

[UPMan]

The scanner will include 700 MHz trunking up to our ability to test on such systems before product release.

 

[brwkem]

UPMAN

Great news!!

Thanks so much for listening to our concerns!

 

[JohnnyGalaga]

I hope the scanner won't have any speaker hiss. Many scanners have a quiet white noise type sound that comes from the speaker even when the scanner is not receiving anything. This consumes battery power.

 

[Voyager]

I hope the scanner won't have any speaker hiss. Many scanners have a quiet white noise type sound that comes from the speaker even when the scanner is not receiving anything. This consumes battery power.

We can hope, but it seems most scanners do have some hiss. They need to power-down the audio amp when the scanner isn't actually receiving.

Joe M.

 

[jwpottberg]

I hope the scanner won't have any speaker hiss. Many scanners have a quiet white noise type sound that comes from the speaker even when the scanner is not receiving anything. This consumes battery power.

We can hope, but it seems most scanners do have some hiss. They need to power-down the audio amp when the scanner isn't actually receiving.

Joe M.

I believe this happens with the 246T when battery save is on. After the timeout period (about a minute or so of no traffic when held on a channel) the hiss goes away. Possibly the 396 will do the same.

Jim

 

[jrjarna]

FCC Type acceptance

Any word/guesses on an FCC type acceptance date? :?:

 

[1080iAddict]

OT: Quick Motorola Question

This is off topic but I got a forwarded e-mail in circulation that said "things you should know" and among them was this statement:

"The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola."

Is this true?

-ACH