Philadelphia Area/BCD 396XT

[Andyboyfire]

Hi all,
To be perfectly blunt I know very little about digital trunking scanners. I have heard very good things about Bearcat 396XT. I live in the Philadelphia area and was looking for some input, how difficult is it to program, how far away can you be from a city with digital truning and still hear the communications? I was also wondering if you purchase this scanner can you still hear frequencies such as 154.xxxx or 483.xxxx, I am looking to primarily listen to fire and some police channels. I live in Burlington Co. NJ, near the military bases, for those who are familiar with the Philly metro area. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Don57]

Bcd396xt

I am a new owner with the BCD396XT (about 10 days now) , first , I am on the south shore of Long Island NY , about 40 miles east of NYC , I have no problem hearing the NYPD , FDNY and all other NYC agencies including the ones in the Bronx and on Staten Island . I am even picking up some things from Momouth County NJ (with the rubber duck antenna that it came with) . I was not going to try and program this scanner manually so I purchased a year subscription to this website and I purchased the BuTel ARC-XT Basic cdrom software . In the beginning it was a bit frustrating but now I see it isn't that difficult. I am still learning but atleast I am up and running . It is a very nice scanner and I highly recommend it .
I have been listening to scanner for about 35 years now and have always manually programmed them , so needing software and downloading frequencies was kind of frightening to me , but it's not that bad , it just takes getting use to.

 

[adamr368]

This scanner is EXACTLY what you need. Also, check out Welcome to PhillyScanner.com and join Joe Cardani's site. You will be very pleased to learn that the entire Burlington County Trunk system is captured within his guide in addition to just about any other trunked or conventional system you can imagine. To answer your question, the conventional channels are also supported by this scanner...

 

[trap5858]

You might be a little distant to receive the Philly systems. I'm a little over 20 miles away from the nearest repeater site and can't hear them.

 

[sjlamb]

You might be a little distant to receive the Philly systems. I'm a little over 20 miles away from the nearest repeater site and can't hear them.

Definitely beyond normal listening range from Ft.Dix / McGuire AFB area. May..... just MAY.... pull them in occasionally with a band specific yagi pointed right at them and at good elevation.

 

[ampulman]

You might be a little distant to receive the Philly systems. I'm a little over 20 miles away from the nearest repeater site and can't hear them.

Likewise, I'm at the border of Voorhees and Marlton and have extreme difficulty picking up Philly (weak, in and out signal).

Their system is designed to limit reception outside of the city.

Amp