Uniden Bearcat BC-760XLT

[JASII]

So, who else here had a Uniden Bearcat BC-760XLT back in the day? I actually bought two of these, one for the house and one for the car and added the optional CTCSS decoder. Unfortunately, I had nothing at the time to easily search for CTCSS codes! So, I started by using two of the 20 channel banks and programming in the various combinations of tones on a frequency that I was trying to figure out. Tedious, but effective. I fairly quickly started to notice patterns. For example, the county I was living in used a common tone for police and fire. Neighboring counties usually used a common tone for their police and fire. That led to me becoming interested in learning more about sub-audible signalling. I was a bit confused, at first, when I would hear what I later found out were "community repeaters" with multiple, disparate users sharing. I couldn't always find a PL tone for them. It was sometime later that I found out that they were often using DPL! It would be quite some time later until I had equipment to search for PL AND DPLs!

When I finally got a radio that would search for sub-audible signals and log them under computer control, it was a lot of fun to determine who the users were, what frequencies and PL/DPL they were using, etc.

In it's day, the Uniden BC-895XLT would display the CTCSS in use pretty quickly. It still had no DPL, though. Does anybody remember which Uniden was the first to use DPL? Was it the Uniden BC796D?

 

[mule1075]

I believe the 1st was the 780xlt.

 

[garys]

Yes. The 780xlt was ground breaking in many ways.

I believe the 1st was the 780xlt.

 

[LesWurk]

tone search (and DCS) option for BC760 by AIE

 

[VASCAR2]

I bought a Bearcat 760XLT and the tone board which fit in the bottom side of the radio under the folding stand. Very good analog scanner. I had mine connected to an Antenna Specialist Hi-Lo scanner atenna about 40' on top of my tower.


The tower got struck by lightening. The tower was grounded with grounding rod but still destroyed my scanner and antenna. Blew some breakers in the house and burnt one electrical connection which killed power to half the house. I was fortunate there was no fire. I then purchased a Uniden BCD996XT which has been a great scanner.


I wish I still had the BC 760 XLT but it was becoming dated.

 

[nosoup4u]

I had the 950xlt which was the scannerworld version of the 760. I had 1 in the house and 1 in the car. The CTCSS tone board was great at the time. Burlington County, NJ Fire at the time shared many of the same VHF frequencies as FDNY and during the summer they would step all over us. It was great to filter them out. My local PD also had Voice Guard on their dispatch channel and the tone board was great to filter that out when they switched it on (which was only when they had to relay sensitive info, it was normally off).

 

[VASCAR2]

Does anyone remember when the Uniden BC760XLT was on the market. I figure it might have been around 1983 to 1985 when I bought mine but I can’t remember for sure. The scanner I had prior to the BC760XLT was the first synthesized Bearcat where you had small rocker switch under each channel’s LED which were used for programming. I think it was a Bearcat 101 and I bought it in the late 70’s. Prior to to the Bearcat 101 I had two Bearcat III’s.

 

[nosoup4u]

I remember seeing it in the communications store in Dec 1988 when I bought my BC200XLT. I bought m 950's around 1991.

 

[cg]

I think the 898T was the first with DPL and preceded the 780 series.

chris

 

[mule1075]

I think the 898T was the first with DPL and preceded the 780 series.

chris

The 780 came out before the 898t.

 

[YoShep69]

There was a company that sold a tone finder for the 760XLT. It was mounted in half of a 760XLT case. With that you could mount it directly
to your 760XLT. Had 2 760XLT's with the tone finder attached.

Greg

edit: I see LesWurk posted a better picture.

 

[JASII]

If I recall correctly, somewhere, probably RCMA, had modifications that could add memory. I never did it, but I thought long and hard about it.

 

[LesWurk]

If I recall correctly, somewhere, probably RCMA, had modifications that could add memory. I never did it, but I thought long and hard about it.

can add 100 memories, it's on Mods.dk and possible eleswhere

 

[weathermedic]

I had a 760xlt with the tone board in my car back in the day. It was a great small scanner that was easy to fit in almost any type of car. You needed the PL board, especially here in NYC where all the intermod would overwhelm the front end of the 760. Especially in Manhattan. Sometimes it would even break through the PL tone lol. I eventually sold the radio on ebay when I got a 780. I ended up missing the 760. My biggest complaint was that it did not have an alpha display. Only frequencies/PL tones were displayed.

My friend is moving out of state and was cleaning out his house when he found 3 of them which he gave to me. Two of which have the PL board. One of them has no audio. I haven't had a chance to play with it. Another one (without the tone board) is missing a volume knob. That is no biggie to fix. The third one (with PL board) works great and I have it set up to listen to NYPD analog frequencies.

 

[dkf435]

Had BC6760XLT one with AIE TCF-3 and one with AIE TCFU-4, The TCFU-4 was a CTCSS and DCS code finder and you could program up to 10 PL or DPL tones per channel.

David

 

[15plus1]

I loved the 760XLT.. Got rid of it 'cause all UHF stuff here uses DPL/DCS.

 

[fyrboy]

Does anyone remember when the Uniden BC760XLT was on the market. I figure it might have been around 1983 to 1985 when I bought mine but I can’t remember for sure. The scanner I had prior to the BC760XLT was the first synthesized Bearcat where you had small rocker switch under each channel’s LED which were used for programming. I think it was a Bearcat 101 and I bought it in the late 70’s. Prior to to the Bearcat 101 I had two Bearcat III’s.

Back of my owner's manual says copyright 1989.