Uniden Bearcat

[jrb3223]

I'll apologize upfront I am a complete noob to the scanner scene, but I have a few questiosn. First is a BC350C scanner even still practical or is it more or less obsolete. Is Kansas on any sort of a digital system/ is this still going to do its job with this "rebanding" I've been reading about, but don't exactly understand? The reason I ask is I have a buddy offering me one dirt cheap.

 

[mancow]

It depends where you are at. The State has started building the APCO 25 digital system and it is on line along a good portion of I-35.

The 350 will work for 99.9% of the State but it is a very basic unit. There is no alpha text tagging capability, tone search, tone filtering, etc...

If it's cheap enough grab it. If you want digital you will need to shell out some cash, unfortunately.

 

[jrb3223]

I live in Topeka, Kansas. Is this scanner going to be useless for cop scanning soon. Or does it still have a few years of solid use left? I guess I just don't fully understand how soon this digital system will take over.

 

[KAA951]

I live in Topeka, Kansas. Is this scanner going to be useless for cop scanning soon. Or does it still have a few years of solid use left? I guess I just don't fully understand how soon this digital system will take over.

The B350C won't work (well) now for scanning any of the Topeka / Shawnee County police or fire traffic. They operate on an 800mhz Motorola Type II Smartnet trunked radio system. For the "noob" this means that there are 15 radio channels that the radio traffic will jump between- you really need a trunking capable scanner to listen to them. I suppose the B350C could follow the raw traffic but it would be really difficult to follow a conversation or an incident without the trunking scanner capabilities. Check this link for more information on the Shawnee County system.

http://www.radioreference.com/modules.php?name=RR&ctid=972

Watch for all the state radio traffic in the Topeka area (Highway Patrol, KDOT, Capitol Police etc) to jump over to the new digital P-25 state system in the next 6 months or so. Shawnee County will be staying on their analog Type II system for a few years yet.