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Uniden BC 246T Trunking scanner
I have been Watching the progress of this scanner for some months now. From the news from uniden were releasing it through the fcc clearance stage and up to the release date. What made me stand up and take note was the "Close call" feature. Basically this is a built in frequency counter if you like, that not only displays the frequency found but also tunes in (Lets you listen) as well. The alinco djx 2k came with this feature (Supposedly) but I found it nowhere near as good as a Opto scout. Would it work on the 246T? Let's find out shall we? Before we do that I will give a complete description of this little scanner. Info taken from Uniden site.
I will start by explaining some of the above features. 1600 Channels 2500 Maximum dynamically allocated channels. This is a new feature which has been utilised by the 246T in as much as instead of the traditional banking systems used in other scanners, such as say ten banks of 50 ch,s each. Totaling 500 ch's in all (example only models vary) say we were to assign each bank to a certain use e.g. Bank 1 for police bank 2 for airband frequencies etc. Lets say that in your area there was only say ten police ch worth listening to then you will have 40 ch's going to waste. Now bank 2 the airband bank, you may have 70 ch's worth listening to but you will run out of space as there is more than the allocated 50 ch's per bank. One way round the last problem is to assign another memory bank as airband also, but then you run into the previous problem of then having 30 ch's being wasted and not used. Not only that but you have one less bank to store your other users. To make matters worse with trunking scanners it became more of a mess as some systems required say 11 ch's of trunked frequencies that left 39 going to waste (Note some scanners such as the Uniden BC/UBC 780 could have trunked and conventional ch's in the same bank). With the Uniden 246T this problem has been resolved in as much as the way banks are arranged is totally different. In fact they no longer call them banks but systems and groups. A system is either a traditional "conventional" pool of frequencies or "Trunked" frequencies. To add frequencies you must first make a system. For example I made a Conventional system called "Action" as this is where all the action would be. Then I made a group called "police" in which I would store my local conventional police frequencies. Add to this I made a group called retail in which I would store all my retail frequencies. I could go on but in a nutshell each group grew as it needed to as and when I needed to add a channel. and if a group only needed say 5 ch's then it would only have 5 ch's with none going to waste. You see there are no number of ch's allocated as there are with the old banking system. Rather it will grow as it needs to (Within reason). This makes for much better control over resources for memory management. For a better explanation please see this description of the 246 memory management. 1600 ch's typical 2500 max means that 2500 can be used but using alpha tags etc. brings the amount you can really use to around the 1600 mark. Trunktracker III technology. Allows for trunk tracking of Motorola, EDACS EDACS scat,and LTR systems. This feature is of limited use to the UK user especially as Airwave the digitally encrypted radio system is about to take over the police users that use trunking in the UK. (Note the 246T will not track the Staffordshire starnet system due to the 12.5khz step sizes used by this system. Although you can use 12.5khz steps in conventional vhf frequencies its not I'm afraid an option with trunking ch's.) London Met radio however will be in the grasp of this radio. Close Call™ RF Capture Technology Basically this when activated will tune the scanner into nearby radio communications. For instance you could be in a shopping mall and a security guard keys up and the close call feature in an instant will tune you into his conversation. This feature (using a different name) has been employed on another scanner but in my opinion failed miserably. DCS/CTCSS Rapid Decode A feature I loved about the Radio shack pro-92 was its capability to instantly decode CTCSS/DCS tones (Albeit you had to decide if you wanted ctcss or dcs tones decoding. The 246T will do both simultaneously). First Impressions. First of all the scanner comes in a box. Also included are. A wrist strap (Don't think I'll ever use that) RS232 Cable for computer control. Wow Uniden Way to go!! This is great news as you will find programming with the software a hell lot easier than programming by hand. An ac wall charger is supplied (Note In UK this will be of no use unless you have an adapter due to the different plug design used in the US) Two AA batteries. Thank you! a 6 and a quarter inch rubber duck antenna. Belt clip and screws, a user manual. Two frequency guides (Again for use in the US) When I first received the 246T I was rather surprised at the size I expected it to be smaller for some reason. Having said this it is by no means a large unit. Coming in a just a little bigger that the Icom R5 I also was surprised by the quality of the case, it looked like one of those cheap PMR446/FRS radios very plasticky. As time has gone by I have grown to love the 246T both aesthetically and the weight (Very light). I managed to drop the scanner from quite a height accidentally and apart from a few scratches there was no damage done at all. The display is a nice large size allowing for a good number of alpha texts 16 characters in all. Plus allowing for plenty of other information to be shown. The top of the unit is made up of a BNC type connection (I don't like the sma type they look too flimsy for my liking). Next to this is an earphone socket and next to this is the volume/Squelch knobs and next to that is the rotary knob used to scroll through channels and menu's.
The middle of the unit is made up of the keypad and below this is the speaker grill. The sides have finger grips which is a god send I'm sure. The left side of the unit (As you look at the display) Has a Function and Menu button which are used in conjunction with the keypad and scroll knob to access certain functions. Moving to the other side of the unit we have a fixing for attaching a hand strap (Supplied) a remote socket for computer controlling the 246T of which is kept free from dust etc with a rubber plug. Below this is a charging socket for use with the supplied PSU and Ni-Mh batteries. The rear of the unit has a belt clip (When you screw it on).The unit comes in a Grey colour which is the norm for most scanners and I have no complaints here. Before we go any further it must be remembered that this scanner was made for the US market and so comes with US set-up such as frequency band settings, step sizes, modes etc. Luckily the latter two can be changed and tailored to your requirements. For instance I was pleased to find it has 6.25 KHz steps that can be used with the UK/european PMR 446 radios, this is a feature my 780 does not have. Belt clip The belt clip is a plastic affair, nothing fancy and probably easy to break but I loved the ease in which it slipped on and off of the top of my trousers. Not only that but it does not protrude too much so is not bulky when slipped in a pocket. I do know in the states that there are types available.
Getting started. First thing I wanted to know was how to program the radio. I should have realised that things were not going to be straight forward, after all this scanner has dynamic memory management. I have to admit I failed dismally and went running to the arc 246 demo software to help me out and get me started. I also pleaded for help on the 246 Yahoo group. So why the big deal? Well once I realised that instead of memory banks we were now dealing with systems and groups things started to clear a little. You see you first have to make a system. That system has to be either a conventional system (Most will be in the UK) A motorola Trunked system or LTR Trunked system. Once you have created your system and given it a name of your choice. I called my first one "Action" as this was going to be where all the more exciting stuff would be stored. I then made a group within the system called "Police" where... surprise surprise the police freq's would be stored. Another group called "Security" Where security ch 's... well you know the rest. etc. etc. The idea behind this as I explained at the beginning of this review is to save on space. As previously stated " I could go on but in a nutshell each group grew as it needed to as and when I needed to add a channel. and if a group only needed say 5 ch's then it would only have 5 ch's with none going to waste. You see there are no number of ch's allocated as there are with the old banking system. Rather it will grow as it needs to (Within reason). This makes for much better control over resources for memory management. " Each system and group could be given a "quick key" number which could be pressed to activate or deactivate each system or group. Rather like the old way on the radio shack/Realistic scanners of pressing the corresponding key for each bank. To further explain this if you wanted to monitor any system then you press the relevant key number that you have assigned to that system. To deactivate it you again press that key. If you want to monitor any group in your system then you press function button and the relevant key that you have assigned to that group. To again deactivate it then perform the above sequence. Further to this each system can be assigned a hold time with a range from 0-255. Basically this means the more you increase any system hold time increases the amount of time in seconds the system will be scanned before moving to the next system. For instance if you set the "Action" system (My system where all emergency type frequencies are stored) to 255 then it will scan that system for 255 seconds before moving to the next one. Each system can also be assigned a delay time of your choice from 1-5 seconds or off. so that whatever setting you choose will define how long each frequency stored in your system will pause after a transmission before resuming. Personally I would have preferred this on a per ch basis. Each channel can have its own defined settings such as step size,(5,6.25,7.5,40,12.5,15,25,50 or 100 khz steps) alpha tag, (16 Characters) priority setting, beep alert, ctcss/dcs setting, (This includes the facility to search on a per ch for tones in use. Well done Uniden) mode, attenuation and lockout. Also Channels can be copied from one system and pasted into another. I tried this and although it does work I prefer to use the software (See below for software options) for such tasks. as it is long winded to some degree. Also note that we appear to be no longer working with channel numbers whereas we always did with the older type banking systems. To me this makes it harder to recall channels, with the old system we get to know what channels are where and its a simple case of recalling that ch number up. With the 246 this is not as clean cut. According to the manual this is a trade off with using dynamically arranged channel grouping. After a short while adding systems, groups and channels came easy although quite laborious to the way we are used to programming Uniden Scanners. Once I had a few frequencies programmed one of the first things I was dying to try out was the CTCSS/DCS feature.
I loved the way my old pro-92 could find them in an instant but with the 92 you had to search for one or the other, ctcss or dcs. With the 246T it would search simultaneously If I understood things correctly. I am delighted to say this feature works brilliantly, decoding any tones in use on a frequency in a matter of a fraction of a second. Absolutely brilliant! I have wanted this feature for some time and now I have it. Not only that my Uniden UBC 780 is missing a couple of ctcss tones but I am happy to see these are intact on the 246. It was a delight not to have to wait for the tones to be displayed like on most other scanners where the scanner would slowly sample each tone to see if it was the one being used. This can be frustrating on those elusive ch's that are used briefly. Anyone that has searched for a tone only to see that the scanner has not found it before the transmission has ceased will be well aware of where I am coming from here. Search feature The search feature of this scanner is again absolutely brilliant in my opinion. When searching You can press enter when an active frequency is found and you are then given the option to enter into a "Quick save" group or one of the system/groups that you created earlier or into a new system. This is great for instance if you have a system/group called "Police" and you know the new frequency found is a police ch. You simply select the Police group to save your new found frequency into that group. If you are not sure who it is then save into the "Quick save" group for later analysis. Also there is an auto store feature which stores found frequencies into a system/group of your choice. This also checks for previous entries so that it is not storing the same frequencies into memory. When searching for trunk ID's then new ones can also be auto stored. Nice! Search options are, Service search which is a series of pre-programmed search banks covering Airband, marine, railroad, CB, FRS/GMRS, Racing, Special, Public safety, Ham and News. Of these only the air and marine will be of use in the UK/Europe. It also comes with Custom Search in which you can edit your own settings such as search limits, step size, mode (or modulation as uniden call it) Tone search etc. Not sure of the search speeds but it seems very quick and more than adequate. I quickly and easily entered my own custom search bands. Instead of the old search banking system where you had bank1 bank 2 etc. with the 246 you get Custom search 1 custom search 2 etc. going up to ten. The lovely thing about this is you can change the name to whatever you like so Custom search 1 can be changed to "Vhf search" or "UHF Ham band" or whatever takes your fancy. Another lovely feature and the first I have seen on any scanner is when you have the search bands set up to search for any tones in use. If the 246 stops on a frequency and finds the tone in use (Did I mention that it does this instantly? Oh I did sorry) if you now enter the found frequency into one of your system groups then the tone found will also be stored. Lovely! Also the 246T has a quick search feature in which it will search upwards or downwards from the frequency it is currently on. This is a feature that I used to like on the old realistic/radio shack models.
Display As previously mentioned the display is of a very good size allowing plenty of information to be displayed such as 16 alpha tags. Also giving a display of what system and group you are monitoring. The latter is shown in the form of text alternating at the top of the display so for instance in the display on my screen I am monitoring a police ch whilst in scan mode it will show "Action" as that is the system I have it in and then it would show "Police" as that is the group I have this frequency saved and below this would be the Tag I had given the frequency Such as "KL VHF Ch 1". Below this is the mode I have that ch saved as. Also the system/group numbers that are active are displayed. This is all very impressive and I love it. However there is one problem that I was not too keen on. Although having alpha tags (Text) showing who you are listening to there is no way of knowing what frequency you are on without doing a sequence of key pressing and knob turning. Ok I can live with that, the Icom R5 is very similar but there is no way of knowing if the ch you are listening to has a ctcss/dcs tone assigned to it as this is not displayed either. Again this requires doing a sequence of key pressing and knob turning. I found myself constantly checking a ch to see if it had one assigned to it. One way around this is to set all ch's to search for a tone (There's that search for tones on a per ch feature again that I love). Entering when found and any ch's that don't show up as searching, then you know has one or does not use one. Luckily when in search the tone is displayed. Oh Did I mention the tones are decoded instantly? I did? oh sorry. Another thing I miss is the signal strength meter we have come to expect from today's scanners. This is nice to see when your scanner locks on to a ch. and there is no speech, a look at the signal strength meter gives you an idea when scanning is likely to resume. Not to forget its proper purpose of how strong a signal is being received.
Backlight I have asked for a squelch activated backlight for some time and I think AOR were one of the first to employ this on their 8200 MK III scanner. I am pleased to say that uniden have now employed this on the 246T. Plus you have the option to have backlight activated infinitely (Until you de-activate it). or set it to operate for a number of seconds. The backlight itself is the one we have come to expect off uniden these days. A nice orange glow that lights up beautifully. One option you don't get is to set the dimmer, where you can lower the lighting saving on battery consumption somewhat. Apart from this I am very pleased with the backlight feature. One major moan has to be that the keypad does not light up. But as we are getting a hell of a lot for our money in my opinion this is a trade off we have to expect. Priority The 246T comes with a priority feature and a priority plus feature. The priority feature works by sampling your chosen priority channels every 2 seconds. The new thing for me here appears to be the unlimited amount of channels available to be used as a priority channel. Usually you are restricted to one per bank but as we are no longer using banks then why be restricted to one channel? Remember this is a very advanced scanner. Priority ch's have their own priority allocations. A Ch in a lower number (at the front of the group) will have priority over one further down the line so if the scanner is on a priority ch a more prioritised ch will be checked for activity and if any found will switch to the higher prioritised ch. (I hope to god that makes sense). Priority plus is a handy feature that I saw with the Uniden UBC 3300 xlt whereas only the priority channels will be scanned. This I found myself using a fair few times. Beep alert The Uniden's now come with this as standard going by the ones I have used recently. The beep alert can be set on a per ch basis alerting you that the interesting frequency is active. It works the same as the 780 in as much as three rapid high pitch beeps are heard, sort of like a shrill noise. I found this works extremely well. You try setting it on your favourite ch's and I can guarantee you your head will turn from whatever you are doing to look at the display. the volume of this alert is determined by the volume you have the scanner set at. Attenuator The 246T comes with an attenuator which can be set on a per ch basis. I very rarely use attenuation personally but my brief tests show the setting about right, not being too harsh so that it completely flattens all but the very strongest of signals which is the case with some scanners. I know some of you would prefer to have too settings of attenuation like the ones that come with the Alinco DJX 2k. Repeater reverse This is of little or no use to the UK/european/Australian user as it is loaded with pre-set US frequency offsets. Basically you are listening to a frequency you activate this feature and you will be able to monitor the mobile side of the conversation. I first saw this on the Uniden UBC780 and asked then that it could be user changeable but here we are a few years later with the same problem. This would be a feature that I would use a lot if I could. Come on Uniden lets make it user programmable like on the Aor8200, Icom Icr2/5 scanners. Memory check Uniden have provided the 246T with a memory check feature. Basically as we are no longer working with channel numbers how the hell are we supposed to know how much memory for storing frequencies are left? Using this feature the 246 will display in % how much space is left. Well done Uniden, I could have seen that becoming a major moan of users not knowing how much space is left and so not knowing where to allocate ch's. Quick recall This is a feature which let's you quickly recall a channel.... Really? well ok if you say so but in practice this is a bit of a long winded affair to say the least. First you press func/rcl buttons then select the system then select the group and then scroll to your wanted channel. this is rather time consuming but is better than scrolling from each channel and then through each group one by one so if you look at it this way then I suppose it is quick. Battery Life Uniden supply two AA Ni-Mh batteries to get you going which is a nice gesture. After a few charge/discharge cycles that the batteries lasted approx 5-6hours during normal usage of scanning/searching/close call/backlight on continuous/on on squelch opening etc. No doubt if sat on one frequency with battery saver active and little use of the backlight then a few more hours would be experienced. I discarded the supplied Ni-mh and used some 2300 mah ones and these increased the usage time for about a couple of extra hours. When the batteries are due to expire you will receive a beeping sound with a low battery icon flashing. You can be sure the batteries will expire very shortly when you get these warnings. I did read about 10-11 hours use before I got my hands on the 246T, all I can say is they must have been using alkaline's. UPDATE I have tried using Duracell batteries and to be honest I got little if any extended battery life when compared to Ni-Mh rechargeable's. I tried some lower capacity ones and they lasted ten minutes!! Yes I had the switch (There is a switch in the battery compartment one for Ni-Mh and one for regular alkaline's) on the correct setting. Giving me the impression this scanner runs better on Ni-Mh.
Close call I have saved this feature until last because for me it is the best feature of this scanner and to me a major innovation in scanning technology. Alinco were the first to attempt this about 3 yrs ago with their Flash tune feature on the Alinco DJX 2000 but if you read my review on the djx2K you will see it was a very poor effort in my opinion. Basically close call is a feature that will tune your scanner to any near field radio transmissions. E.g. you are passing a construction site and one of the workers keys up on his radio, the close call feature will find the frequency being used and tune the 246T to the frequency being used, rather like a frequency counter in built on the scanner. But with an added bonus. The 246T will actually listen to what is being said! all this is done in an instant. Not only that but it will also instantly find any tones being used. Now if you press enter the frequency and the tone found will be stored into a memory group of your choosing! How brilliant is that? My first excursion using this feature was in my local city centre and I did not have to wait long for transmissions to be found. First of all it found several pager frequencies which are annoying but can easily be locked out of the scanner so that it no longer stops on those frequencies. Lovely! The 246T comes with a pager screening setting so that they are skipped anyway but I believe these are for US pager frequencies and probably of little use in the UK, but like I say it's just a case of locking the annoying frequencies out of the search. (Incidentally if you lock frequencies out of a normal search then they will also be bypassed on a close call search.) The next hit was a Trunked control ch frequency again this was locked out. I continued to get hit after hit from shoe shops operating on PMR 446 ch's these were recorded slightly off frequency due to the scanner rounding up to 12.5KHz steps and pmr 446 uses 6.25KHz. There is an option in some software to tell the 246T what frequency steps to use in certain frequency bands but at this point I had not experimented with this. I received numerous hits from store security radios getting accurate hits (Not slightly off like you get with a frequency counter. UHF and VHf hits being correctly received on 12.5KHz (as used in the UK) When out and about I received several hits from over flying aircraft even when I could not see or hear any!!! The one annoying thing about the close call is that when a frequency has been found rather than displaying the frequency found it will say "Close call freq found" and then you have to press any key for it to be displayed. I find that pressing "hold" to display the frequency and "Hold" again to hold onto the frequency if I am interested in listening to the found frequency and thus pausing any further searching. press hold again to resume close call searching. One time I found it best not to hold was when there was an incident in my local superstore. There are two ch's used and leaving the close call feature searching it was good when each user transmitted on their respective radios that the close call followed the transmissions with no loss in communications from my point. Ok so how good is it compared to an Opto scout say? Ok I sold My Scout to buy the 246T and was hoping I would not regret it. I am pleased to say I don't regret it one bit. The Superstore I was talking about is the biggest one of that name in europe and I could see the guard about 250 Yards away from me talking into his radio and Close call got him. I have seen claims that close call works up to a few hundred feet. I would say that is very conservative to say the least. Admittedly in a higher RF environment things will come down in range somewhat, but my tests show that this feature works very nicely indeed. I did notice on sporadic data signals such as the CCTV cameras on a main road near me and Traffic master data on the motorway, the close call did not capture these whereas the scout would have, but they are of no use listening to anyway. Frequency coverage of the close call is restricted to the bands the scanner covers so you wont for instance get fire on 70MHz as used in the UK or fleetcomm 177-185MHz or Mil airband which for me is a bit of a bummer. I am not sure if Uniden intend to bring out a wider frequency european model but I do know after this review they will be in big demand. (Update Uniden has released the uniden ubc72 scanner in the UK and europe not as fully featured as the 246T but close call should be more wide band) Adding to this the close call has a few options. Close call only. In which case the close call feature will be used to find frequencies and tones but will be nothing else.this is fine when you just want to find radio frequencies being used in the near vicinity. Close call search and store. In which case the scanner will discreetly search and store found frequencies found into memory for later monitoring.(Appears that no tones will be stored in this mode) I tried this out going on a night on the town. Taking the 246 into a nightclub and leaving it on search and store soon had the nightclub bouncers frequencies nicely stored in the "Close call" system/group. On my way home I was listening to all the activity. Lovely! There is also Close call override. In which case you can be scanning or searching or hold on to one frequency or any other option and the close call feature will activate every 2 seconds looking for any transmissions and if found will override what the scanner is currently doing and alert you that a frequency has been found. You can add alerts when a hit has occurred. Visually the 246 will alert you on the display but you can opt for the display light to flash and also a beep alert. I used the latter option in most cases. When working discreetly with walkman type earphones I found this a poor joy to use. You are instantly alerted through your ears by the beep alert and you will hear the transmission. I set the delay to 5 seconds giving me ample time to hold on to the frequency and decide if I wanted to store it into memory. Incidentally using stereo type walkman earphones you get audio in both ears, most scanners give you audio in one! Performance So ok it has some great new features but how good is it on air? Well for the first time in a long time for most of my testing I kept the stock antenna on as it performed very well across a wide frequency range. Starting on low band 30MHz the 246 performed very admirably indeed. Connecting to a Watson W-889 increased reception of more distant signals. Connecting to my discone brought them in from a much greater range and I have to say that the 246T is probably one of the better performers in this frequency range. Moving up into civil airband and using my test frequency of 119.250 using the stock antenna in the same window location I test all scanners I found the Ground side of the comm's just barely audible which is not bad considering most stock antennas are not up to the job. Fitting the Watson brought the signals in much much clearer. When attached to the discone lovely clear signals were received from more distant airfields. I will conclude by saying the 246 is as good as most other scanners on airband. Also I have noted the am audio is very clear and pleasing to the ear. Moving up into vhf 152-174 Mhz using the supplied antenna I found out that the antenna worked really good on VHF pmr fitting my Watson for once did not increase the reception by much. Again the 246T proved an effective performer with either aerial fitted and with the discone fitted. Sometimes surprising me with the things that it managed to receive. Up into UHF and I felt the 246T really excels here. However the supplied aerial does not. Don't get me wrong it will pick up all the strong signals and then some but to really benefit here the watson brought the 246T into its own. I also have a very good uhf stubby that also brought out the best in the 246T. A neighbouring towns community repeater being brought in loud and clear on 440MHz being a fine example when other scanners just about receive it when in a good reception area.
Birdies For those that do not know what birdies are they are the name we give to those annoying frequencies that when we are in search mode the scanner locks onto a frequency even though there is no real transmission going on. This is caused by a number of factors including internally generated interference on the scanner itself. Years ago I remember these signals sounded like birds chirping so hence the name. (I still cant work out why we don't hear these chirping noises any more) I am pleased to say on the 246T these are very few and far between. I did not count them but any that are encountered can easily be locked out of a search range without taking a lot of space in your deleted ch's. Audio When I first tried cranking the volume up I was under the impression that the 246T would be a strain on the ears when used in a vehicle, but when put into practice this wasn't the case and with volume up I was able to hear what was being said clearly with little distortion. Trunking Unfortunately the 246T cannot handle the only trunking system used in my area. This is a motorola vhf system which uses 12.5KHz steps and although the 246T can resolve 12.5KHz steps in conventional scanning mode the trunking settings wont accept 12.5Khz on vhf. Due to these reasons I cannot comment on a major feature of this scanner other to say that it can't handle this system. However a friend of mine who has been out with his 246T reports the following. in each group you can have a maximum of 200 talkgroup ids, just like in conventional operation you can have 200 freq's,the tags work same way. So you could split down into 10 smaller groups if you wanted to. A great feature also is that the 246T recognise's any talkgroup's you have entered already and prompts you before loading into memory. This is a bonus for me I wished many a time that my 780 would do this after constantly saving the same talk groups.
The auto store also works extremely well, combine this with the fact you can have talkgroup id auto store and also control ch only mode, means loading a system you have limited knowledge of is very easy to do, you of course need to know base and offset as with other trunk tracking. To do this You simply find the local control channel,enter the system parameters and then put control channel in and set up auto store and In a typical busy system you can have most used talkgroup's loaded very quickly. very neat that. On Motorola type two you do have choice of control channel only or all frequencies, I tried both and the control mode only was as reliable as the all freq's so I was very impressed with this I can go to other areas and load in quickly systems I don’t as a rule check. As with the conventional frequency entering direct entry for frequencies you can also directly enter a Talkgroup id into the group you specify or the “quick save group” you simply type in the talkgroup you want to enter, ie one second you are scanning, you then simply press 1616 for example and it will see that as talkgroup and enter as such, but will run a check with what's in the memory already.Agai as soon as it sees say “1616” for a talkgroup you have already entered it will tell you its in the memory already and prompt you to carry on or leave it. I also found using the system holding settings very useful here,I could set it to hold on a system for 25 seconds,or indeed more or less as required,the 2 second default I did find meant the system scanned once only and for trunking its best to do several sweeps so 25 seconds was about right, it scanned about 5 times. Computer control There are several options when it comes to computer controlling this scanner. To name the ones I know of are the Uniden software, ARC 246T and scancat. I contacted one of the creators of their software asking to review but felt they did not really want me to review it as they offered a time limited demo. Another one contacted me and asked me to review their software. and that will be coming shortly. In all fairness this scanner really does get easier when using software. This is a very complex scanner and using software can give the new user an idea of how the scanners system/groups are laid out. Luckily Uniden supply an rs232 cable, so you can be up and running on any of the available software packages. The 246T is a fully featured scanner for its price range. There are certain shortcomings such as no lighting of the keypad but the key layout is such a no nonsense affair I found I could do any operation of the scanner blind. It really is that easy. I do expect to see a more "Upmarket" model in the future, no doubt building on the success of this little radio.Also I do miss the signal strength meter that have become the norm on today's scanners. I must say that this scanner was intended for the US market so I feel most shortcomings for users in Europe/UK/Australia will be down to the location the scanner was designed for. However the features this little scanner employs make it well worth while importing into your country. (At least until Uniden produce an EU version) The close call feature will sell this radio alone. Even without the Close call feature this is one hell of a scanner. My other scanners have not been touched since I got this little baby and I know of others that say the same. So what are the shortcomings? the negatives? Well for the UK/European user it is going to be frequency coverage for a start. There are too many gaps. But if you do not monitor mil air or fire then in the whole you wont be missing out on much. But imagine you are at an airshow and an aircraft flies over and transmits on an unpublished frequency, with the 246 having coverage of the military bands the frequency would be found. Like I say I expect there will be a "Deluxe" model in the future. Costing approx £150 when translated from dollars at the current time of writing and don't forget you will be hit for £38 import duty when UPS knock your door (Make sure you can pay there and then otherwise he wont give you the 246T) But even with the added tax I still consider it a good price for a brilliant little scanner. I ordered mine on a tuesday afternoon from www.123radios.com in the states and it was here thursday morning!! You will have to check availability as this scanner is so popular in the states most outlets are sold out. Payment options by 123radios include paypal or credit/debit cards. I do not regret the sale of my Opto scout one bit. Yes it was faithful to me for many years but sadly (for it not me!)has been retired due to the new kid on the block. My other scanners have not had a look in since I got this and my favourite 780 is now permanently hooked up to my pc decoding these days. One word of advice though, if you are thinking of purchasing one of these scanners then stop thinking right now and go get one you will not regret it. For me this scanner is a major development in scanning technology and am proud to own one. © 03/05 Yahoo groups There are a few Yahoo groups dedicated to this scanner. Two I will recommend. The first is 246T euro for uk european users the second is more stateside.
 Click to join BC246T-BCD396TEuro Click to join BC246T
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