Public Safety Radio Scanner (My Story)

[Frank Jr.]

A few months before Christmas I opened my big mouth and mentioned something to my wife about maybe wanting a police scanner. Prior to retiring I listened to and talked on a two way radio for 9 plus hours a day. (32 years) During that time I would not have even considered buying a scanner. Today most everything in my area has gone digital. A digital scanner is in the 500 dollar range. For the life of me I could not justify the cost. Well, Santa put a Uniden Bearcat BCD996XT under my tree.

I cannot provide a complete and proper review of this scanner. I will say it does what it is supposed to do and does it well, after I programmed it properly. You can program this scanner manually if you are related to Albert Einstein. For a quick look at what you would be in for, click on the following link. Easier to Read BCD996XT Digital Scanner Manual. For me I paid 15 bucks for a 180 day subscription to RadioReference.com and also downloaded FreeScan Software. After I finally programmed it correctly I decided to upgrade the internal speaker with an external speaker and upgraded the supplied antenna with an outside base antenna.

From my experience most hobbies can (and usually do) get expensive…This one is no exception. Thanks Santa!

One aggravating thing I almost forgot to mention is that I needed a special cable to connect the scanner to a computer for programming purposes. The one that Uniden provides in the box with the scanner requires a serial port connection that 99.9% of us do not have on our home computers. When I saw that useless cable in the box I felt like Uniden had given me the middle finger for some strange reason.

 

[turbosat]

Glad most of my local agencies still are not using all that fancy stuff and I don't need the headache of trying to program one of those things. One day, it will happen here too, I suppose, by then there probably won't be ANY computers left with a serial port lol.

 

[Frank Jr.]

Glad most of my local agencies still are not using all that fancy stuff and I don't need the headache of trying to program one of those things. One day, it will happen here too, I suppose, by then there probably won't be ANY computers left with a serial port lol.

Maybe by then Uniden will be putting the proper USB cable in the box.

 

[Comptech]

Frank, get yourself a scanntenna2,then 2 filters from par. the first one is a FM broadcast filter and the second one will be a filter for your local NOAA weather station,listen to your local station and tell Dale the frequncy and he will build it to the exact specs. The Scantenna is cheap at about 40 bucks shipped but the filters will run around 60 bucks a each but they are worth their weight in gold. I am in the upstate of SC, were is Cola?

Never mind took a second but figured out Columbia.

 

[Jim S.]

I'm amazed to hear that people are having overloading from NOAA stations. The local one is a piece of crap that wouldn't even overload a crappy scanner, let alone a good one, despite being located on the highest tower in the area.