Programming The Uniden Bearcat BCD396XT/BCD996XT For Military Aircraft

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JASII

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I haven't monitored the band from 225-400 mHz much for a long time. I have both a Uniden Bearcat BCD396XT and a BCD996XT and I want to program the entire bandplan in. I seem to recall when I was listening back in the day 100 kHz channels were common, but it looks like I need to go 25 kHz now. Anyway, I will probably start by creating 7 banks of 1000 channels each in 25 kHz. Bank 1 225-250 mHz, etc. I see that there are a several other websites out there for getting back up to speed on military aircraft monitoring, which of these would be the best for me to read to get back up to speed? Also, for those of you into this area, what techniques work best for catching activity? One technique I want to try is using two radios. One will just scan the entire band and then as active frequencies are found I would enter them into a second radio to focus on. Anyway, is this likely to be an effective technique? Any other techniques anybody wants to pass along? I realize that this is a huge chunk of spectrum.
 

ka3jjz

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Searching in 'chunks' is always a better approach for finding new stuff; however a much better bet, just to get your feet wet, is to program in some freqs known to have activity. Since you didn't put anything in your User CP to indicate where you are (that can be found linked in the blue toolbar under the forum titles) it's much more difficult to recommend somewhere to get that information....

You might want to consider programming 2 sets of search ranges, for both radios, and using a program to log what you find. Likely as not you would want to record stuff so you can check it later, and ProScan is a good bet for this (note that the website says 996XT support is due this month). To make it simpler, I hope you would be planning on 2 different PCs...

This is one game where the antenna makes a great deal of difference in whether you hear something or not. A ScanTenna, discone or one of the DPD productions models are examples - get it up nice and high, feed it with good coax, and you're half way home.
 
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JASII

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Thank you for the reply. I have a discone fed with 9913 feedline that I can use. I am located in suburban Minneapolis-Saint Paul Twin Cities Metropolitan area of Minnesota. Not exactly a hot bed of military activity, but on the other since it is aircraft that I may be hearing from quite a distance away it may not matter that much. I do have Butel ARC XT PRO software, which will log activity.
 

DPD1

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Your best bet is to put in the UHF Minneapolis Center freqs. You won't hear stuff on all of them, but you can eliminate which ones you don't after a while.
 

ka3jjz

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pilotman1260

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Scanning in small ranges works well too,scan a few channels for awhile to figure which ones are active and listen for aircraft to call out the next frequency,you may not have it,i have been able to find several new Atlanta And Memphis Center frequencies doing that.Keep a notepad handy and write everything down you hear and you can always ask for help from experianced listeners in your area.
 

BMT

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ILS use's 328.6-335.4.
There should not be any voice comms on these freqs.

BMT
 

JASII

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Thank you for the replies so far and I did check the PMs. Also, back in the day I would listen to 30-50 for FM military communications. I seem to recall the talk about old squelch (carrier squelch), but then they switched to "new squelch", which was 150.0 hZ, but I entered 151.4 hZ and it worked. (Hey, what is a few hertz among friends!) I think they had been in 50 kHz channel spacing, but that narrowed to 25 kHz, if I recall correctly. Also, did the did eventually go from 30 to 88 mHz? For a while I was using my equipment to search from 30 to 50 or 76 or 88 mHz with 151.4 hZ enabled. I still have 41.4 mHz, but it seems like 40.5 or 41.5 may have been some sort of "Nationwide" assignment. I think the deviation was wider than we get used to in public safety. Are they 45 kHz channels?
 

psr600md

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Thank you for the replies so far and I did check the PMs. Also, back in the day I would listen to 30-50 for FM military communications. I seem to recall the talk about old squelch (carrier squelch), but then they switched to "new squelch", which was 150.0 hZ, but I entered 151.4 hZ and it worked. (Hey, what is a few hertz among friends!) I think they had been in 50 kHz channel spacing, but that narrowed to 25 kHz, if I recall correctly. Also, did the did eventually go from 30 to 88 mHz? For a while I was using my equipment to search from 30 to 50 or 76 or 88 mHz with 151.4 hZ enabled. I still have 41.4 mHz, but it seems like 40.5 or 41.5 may have been some sort of "Nationwide" assignment. I think the deviation was wider than we get used to in public safety. Are they 45 kHz channels?

try 41.95 lots of A10's use that.other than that one i haved heard any miair in wisconsin on FM ,there is a lot of mil when skips in
 
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