Thank you RR community for helping a total newbie!

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hexagon_keyhole

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Hello, just wanted to drop a line and thank everyone in the Radio Reference Community!

I've been on the fence about buying my first ever scanner, but I was able to snag a BCD436HP from Amazon when they had it for $368...plus the additional cost of waiting a month and a half for delivery. I took the forced wait time to read the forum and learn. By the time Amazon finally shipped, I already knew how to turn on the scanner, perform the updates, and with the insights of RR have a well thought out plan as to how I was going to organize my scanning/favorites list(s).

I hope to be able to contribute something from everything that I have learned here. I know, I will trigger some folks when I say that my BCD436HP is working fine in my simulcast area. I learned so much from RR about distance from broadcast site factors, mitigation factors, and P25 decode adjustment and was very fortunate that I didn't have do do any Yagi antenna pointing or P25 adjustments because of my location.

That being said, I'm trying really hard to talk myself out of a SDS100/200 when my BCD436HP is working perfectly :)
 

trentbob

W3BUX- Bucks County, PA
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Welcome to RR. Congratulations on your new scanner

This is a great forum for you. Don't hesitate to ask any questions.

You probably will end up buying an SDS eventually, just for the display alone LOL.
 

hiegtx

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Dallas, TX
Looking at your past post, it appears that you are in the Sacramento area.

If you are monitoring this system.
I see more than one of the sites are flagged as simulcast. But if, at your location, you do not appear to be missing calls or get garbled transmissions, then you may not be affected.

Other than the ability to deal with simulcast systems better than other models, the only other thing you gain from acquiring an SDS series scanner is the larger, customizable, color display.
 

hexagon_keyhole

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Sacramento, California
Looking at your past post, it appears that you are in the Sacramento area.

If you are monitoring this system.
I see more than one of the sites are flagged as simulcast. But if, at your location, you do not appear to be missing calls or get garbled transmissions, then you may not be affected.

Other than the ability to deal with simulcast systems better than other models, the only other thing you gain from acquiring an SDS series scanner is the larger, customizable, color display.

Affirmative! I plan to meet up with a friend who has a SDS100 to see if I would really gain anything. I would say I receive about 97% of the transmissions, and from what I gather reading through RR is that this is highly "acceptable." It seems that P25 Simulcast issues either render the scanner "deaf" or extremely garbled (sounds underwater with missing words to "quantify" it. I do notice that when the transmissions do sound garbled, the P25 error rates spike 30+, but it doesn't happen enough that doesn't register as a concern for me.
 

Bob1955

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Dec 20, 2016
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790
Location
Eastchester, NY
Looking at your past post, it appears that you are in the Sacramento area.

If you are monitoring this system.
I see more than one of the sites are flagged as simulcast. But if, at your location, you do not appear to be missing calls or get garbled transmissions, then you may not be affected.

Other than the ability to deal with simulcast systems better than other models, the only other thing you gain from acquiring an SDS series scanner is the larger, customizable, color display.
It's not worth the extra money difference from what he paid for his BCD-436HP!
 

Rtoft

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Aug 11, 2020
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Just bought my first digital and it is the 436. Upgrading from the Bc125at which was an upgrade from the BC220xlt. This is a whole new world for me, there was no way that I was going to pay for the SDS when there wasn’t really any huge difference. This is going to take me some time just to figure the 436 out. Not a lot of digital traffic in our area now, but I am hearing that it’s coming so I’d rather have what I need, and from what I am reading an antenna may be necessary.
 

hexagon_keyhole

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Sacramento, California
Welcome to RR. Congratulations on your new scanner

This is a great forum for you. Don't hesitate to ask any questions.

You probably will end up buying an SDS eventually, just for the display alone LOL.

You were right! After a solid month of playing around with the BCD436HP....I picked up a SDS100. I like using the BCD436HP for home, and I use the SDS100 when I'm out and about. What I love about the SDS100 is the color display and all the other cool details.

I thought about selling off the BCD436HP, but I can see that lots of people here on RR have multiple scanners for different applications. I never thought about keeping a dedicated [separate] scanner to monitor Fire/EMS and another for Law Enforcement.
 

DJ11DLN

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Mar 23, 2013
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Location
Mudhole, IN
You were right! After a solid month of playing around with the BCD436HP....I picked up a SDS100. I like using the BCD436HP for home, and I use the SDS100 when I'm out and about. What I love about the SDS100 is the color display and all the other cool details.

I thought about selling off the BCD436HP, but I can see that lots of people here on RR have multiple scanners for different applications. I never thought about keeping a dedicated [separate] scanner to monitor Fire/EMS and another for Law Enforcement.
If you get a lot of traffic, and I would guess you do in your area, sometimes it takes multiple scanners with the channels or talkgroups set up differently in each one to halfway stay on top of things.
 

trentbob

W3BUX- Bucks County, PA
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5,604
You were right! After a solid month of playing around with the BCD436HP....I picked up a SDS100. I like using the BCD436HP for home, and I use the SDS100 when I'm out and about. What I love about the SDS100 is the color display and all the other cool details.

I thought about selling off the BCD436HP, but I can see that lots of people here on RR have multiple scanners for different applications. I never thought about keeping a dedicated [separate] scanner to monitor Fire/EMS and another for Law Enforcement.
If you get a lot of traffic, and I would guess you do in your area, sometimes it takes multiple scanners with the channels or talkgroups set up differently in each one to halfway stay on top of things.

Yes that was a month ago that we welcomed you to RR and you did end up getting an SDS 100 LOL.

Yes it does take multiple scanners to really stay on top of things especially with the SDS series being such a slow scanner secondary to the SDR chip it uses. I use 4 radios by my bedside now :)
 

DJ11DLN

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Mar 23, 2013
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Mudhole, IN
Yes that was a month ago that we welcomed you to RR and you did end up getting an SDS 100 LOL.

Yes it does take multiple scanners to really stay on top of things especially with the SDS series being such a slow scanner secondary to the SDR chip it uses. I use 4 radios by my bedside now :)
Yeah I know, right? It is truly a vicious circle of addition. I have 4 running in the house right now. o_O
 

Enjoi19

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Mar 17, 2020
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I did the same - a few questions and plenty of reading first. The community is a wealth of information just reading random threads that come up daily.

Even onto my second scanner... had a TRX-1, jumped to a Uniden BCD325P2. Now having thoughts of a permanent setup in my vehicle and trying some SDR.
 

bottk

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Mar 3, 2008
Messages
56
Location
wamego kansas
You should feel good , there are times ive asked questions or tried to help someone else who had asked a question and it seemed like everyone who responded to the question had to try to outdo one another seemed to turn into a circus made me wonder why i had asked or tried to help to begin with

Dont get me wrong love the website just seems like the rest of society ,everyone seems to be out to get everyone else
im still a premium member but sometimes i think to myself that all of you well seasoned members should remember this is where the newbies come for help we should try harder to help not turn everything into an argument before we get finished trying to do so
Just sayin !
 
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