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Butel ARC 396 ProAfter making the upgrade from My Uniden BC246T scanner and being used to the Arc 246t software one of the first things I did was purchase the Arc 396 software from Butel. I tried the free Uniden UASD software but could not make head nor tail how to use it. Arc 396 I found much easier. I was happy with the software until I came to try the logging option. I was disappointed to find that the logging options that came with Arc 396 were not there. Features such as logging of frequencies found along with the sub tones etc. It became apparent that I had to upgrade to Arc 396 Pro. Why this comes as standard with arc 246 and not 396 was a question I put to Butel and their reply was, " ARC396 also has recording. Basic is programming software,
pro is So how does it all work? First thing you have to do is get the software to communicate with your scanner. Using the supplied cable from Uniden (Thanks Uniden) you connect to both the scanner and a spare serial port on your PC. Finding which serial port has been made easier for you as the software will scan which port it is connected to by clicking "Auto detect" Once this is complete You are ready to go. When you first open the program you are met with two panes, one on the left and a larger one to the right. If you want to upload the contents of your scanner then you click on the BCD396 drop down menu at the top and select " Read data" and arc396 will read the contents of the scanner. One thing I noticed is that it appears to do this a lot quicker than the arc780 the Butel software for the Uniden BC/UBC780. Once the contents have been read, all your systems/groups can be seen in the left pane. Clicking on any of the systems groups buttons in the left pane will display the contents of the frequencies, Alpha tag, ctcss/dcs code, mode and other options. The opportunities to you are now endless. One of my priorities is to store all ch's in ascending order. This is easily accomplished by highlighting all entries and then clicking AZ ascending order button and all frequencies/entries will now be in ascending order. The reason for this stems from when I found that certain scanners seemed to scan that bit faster when frequencies were in ascending order. Also I find it a good idea to tidy up the contents of your scanner, having them displayed on your computer screen makes this a cinch and with all the various functions you have available thanks to Arc396 makes this even better. Just to give you some idea of the versatility of the software, some frequencies do not fit with the ascending order theory I just mentioned. The reason being that I like to keep the input and output frequencies next to each other for various reasons, one being if talkthrough is switched off then having these two frequencies next to each other makes for an easy knob turn for me to monitor both sides of the conversation. Not only that it also helps me identify how close the mobile unit is to me by looking at the signal strength meter. (This is one let down of the 396 scanner for me, a lot of scanners such as the Icom R5 allow a quick button press to monitor duplex frequencies yes the 396 has it but its hard programmed for the US and is useless for europe/australia) To achieve this with the software is so nice and easy to achieve I actually enjoyed doing it time and again. First of all click on the cell that holds the frequency you want to move and then click either the green up or down button depending on what direction you would like the channel moving and keep clicking until it is where you want it. Lovely. Not only this but You also have the option to copy and swap memory channels or entire groups! The software also comes complete with a "Fill" feature. What this means is say you have an alpha tag in your first memory allocation in a group and that group is for arguments sake for cb radio ch's 1-40 if you have in the the first alpha tag "CB Ch1" you have got another 39 to then put in "CB Ch2" etc. this can be slow and laborious. Using the fill feature arc396 will do the work for you just by highlighting the other ascending cells. Now that is a cool little feature. This not only works for alpha tags but for a range of frequencies that go in any step size numerical order. Quick keys can be assigned to systems/groups via the software. I could go on and on but there just is not enough time for me to cover every feature of this great software. But rest assured anything you can do manually the software can do far easier.
The software also comes with all of the usual options we have come to expect from butel, such as "find duplicates" this is a nice feature that allows you to see if you have a channel duplicated so you can then decide whether you want to remove edit or leave it as it is. You must remember however that unlike say arc780 where it would search every channel stored in all banks this feature is limited to whatever system you are in at the time. there is a find feature, where you can search for a frequency or an alpha tag for conventional or trunked systems. I would however have liked to see an icon for the find feature. With arc 780 there is a binocular icon, with arc396 you have to click edit/find. No great big deal but it could be easier. Every cloud has its silver lining however,with arc396pro when you enter say a frequency or id or alpha tag when it finds them it highlights them all in green,this is a big plus over the arc 780 where you would have to keep clicking as it found them one at a time. Let me explain a little better I typed in 1 and selected it to find a name rather than a frequency, I have a fair few ch's in one group with a number 1 in the alpha tag and arc396 highlighted every single one of them. With arc 780 it finds them one at a time requiring you to keep clicking "find". So this was a most welcome feature for me. Again however this is restricted in range as it will only search what group you are in at the time. Another little gripe I have is that until now (I mean now) after having the
software for about 2 months, I did not realise that there is a virtual control
Icon, with arc780 and arc 246 it is there in all its glory staring at you but
on arc 396 its a tiny miniscule little thing. In fact I was going to complain
that there was no icon for it. I had been going down the bcd396t drop down
menu and selecting virtual control from there. I put this to Butel and they
replied "I changed the overall look of the software and toolbar buttons so You can enter ctcss/dcs tones and set the 396 to search for active tones using the software. Search ranges are saved Using the config editor from within the software.
click Webcatcher This in theory is a great feature of the arc software. The theory being you go to a web site, see a list of frequencies and using the webcatcher feature you can import it into the arc software and in turn into your scanner. Wicked! To try this I went to a yahoo scanning group that had a load of military air frequencies that had been posted and using the webcatcher feature I imported them straight into the software and then into the scanner. This is a lovely feature and one I can see myself using more and more. Sound recording Unfortunately I could not get this feature to work . Posting a message off to the arc396 Yahoo group gave me the answer I needed. Apparently the version I was using had a bug that prevented this feature working. A quick download and install of the latest revision( At time of writing vers 1.09.00 is the latest version) and all was well. This meant I could clear off out to work and leave it recording to my hard drive. I only used this feature for monitoring unknown or interesting frequencies as you will soon find your hard drive gets filled very quickly. This is a great feature of the software and one I will be using time and again. Using this feature I was able to identify previously unidentified users that would have taken me an age to ID by sitting in front of the scanner waiting for them to transmit. The arc software records only when there is a transmission detected and finishes when it ceases just like a vox voice activated type recorder. Virtual control
This is a feature I use very much and one I have come to love. This is a control panel and display, in which you can perform every operation you can with the scanner in your hand. Some of the features such as close call, custom search and settings are even easier using virtual control as they have their own individual virtual button on the display. Normally you would have to go through a menu on the scanner to get to these features. The display can be set at a colour of your liking, it defaults to orange but I set mine to blue. A nice feature with the virtual control is when in close call and a frequency is found it is displayed in the virtual control display window, so you don't have to press any keys to display the frequency found as you would with the scanner itself. Virtual control can be minimised on your screen so that you can resume doing other tasks on your pc. Not as much information is displayed when minimised but plenty to see what is going on. I read in the instructions that there were 3 available sizes when minimised in arc396 pro but I could only find two settings. Another nice feature with minimised, was that by right clicking I could select "autohide" which means the Virtual control will only show when the squelch is broken. Conventional and trunked The BCD396T is a trunking scanner and conventional type scanner, so any software that works with this scanner has to have these capabilities and the arc396 software fits the bill lovely. Setting up the parameters for a motorola vhf system was so easy I thought that I must have missed something. When I came to scan that system I realised all was well. Within the software it is easy to see which systems you have allocated as Trunked systems as they are marked with a letter denoting the type of trunked system. For example a motorola system is highlighted as an "M" an Edacs system will have an "E". As stated earlier I could go on forever about all the features of this software
but it would take me an age. At the time of writing the UHF military airband
changed frequencies so the race was on to find the new "interesting" frequencies.
Using the 396 with arc396 this was made a lot easier than if I were to do it
manually, tapping in each alpha tag would have become a chore. With the software
I could leave the scanner unattended, logging all found frequencies for my
perusal on my return,record the audio should I so wish to my hard drive to
help ID any new users, print off my logs (Saving to a csv. file) and printing
off my memory channels. Is it worth the money? You bet I could not be without
software for this scanner and this became apparent as soon as I started familiarising
myself with it. This scanner has 6000 memory allocations, any scanner with
that big an engine is going to need software to manage it, and for me Arc396pro
fits the bill nicely. Note Arc 396 basic can do all of the things pro can minus
Audio recording and logging. Arc396 basic prices at nearly 40 dollars and pro
version about 30 dollars more. Do I think the two extra features are worth
the extra money? Personally no. I think there should be just the one version
for one price. When you consider that arc246 basic comes with logging as standard
then for 30 dollars more you are getting what you had anyway plus one extra
recording feature. All things said I still would not be without it and would
not hesitate recommending it to anyone.Note: Butel say "you can't really
compare ARC246 pricing etc with ARC396. Initially
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reviewed.[ Aor 8200 ]
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