Uniden BCD396T Digital trunking scanner 
First of all lets get this straight right away before I get
inundated with emails. Yes this is a digital scanner but no it will not follow
or allow you to listen to the UK digital police radios. This scanner was produced
to work with the United states APCO 25 digital radio system. Also before I
go any further I would like to thank Richard Barnett from scannermaster for
the loan of the review set. There were some teething problems getting this
unit into the UK but have now been sorted.
PRODUCT
FEATURE LIST
- TrunkTracker
IV (Motorola APCO 25 Digital, Motorola, EDACS, LTR)
6000 Dynamically Allocated channels
Close Call™ RF Capture Technology - Instantly tunes to signals
from nearby transmitters
Fire Tone-Out
Alpha Tagging
100 Quick Key System Access
Preprogrammed Coverage of Over 400 Cities
Continuous Band Coverage - 25MHz to 1.3GHz
Compact Size
Audio AGC
Automatic Digital Threshold Adjustment
Search with Scan
DCS/CTCSS Rapid Decode - Instantly Detects and Displays the Subaudible
Tone So You Can Quickly Determine the System Settings.
S.A.M.E. Weather Alert - Specific Area Message Encoding - During a
NOAA Weather or Emergency Alert, a code for your specific location will alert
you to severe conditions in your immediate area.
- PC
Control/Programming (Software Included)
When
I reviewed
the Uniden BC246T a few months back it was the first scanner to come with
the close call feature. I did mention that although it had loads of features,
it did lack some features I would like to have seen. Mainly a lack of frequency
coverage. I mentioned that I thought that Uniden would be back shortly
with a flagship version and I was correct. They are back with the Uniden
BCD396T scanner with a much larger frequency coverage and some extra features.
( 25-512
MHz, 764.00-775.9875 MHz, 794.000-823.9875 MHz, 849.0125-868.9875 MHz,
894.0125-956.0000 MHz, 1240-1300 MHz) Before
I go any further I must congratulate Uniden USA as they are bringing out
scanners like nobody's business. They really do listen to what the customer
wants and then come up with the goods. There is now really a two horse
race between Uniden and Radio shack. Not only that both of them offer
after support in the way of firmware updates which give better features
to older scanners.Well done!!!
With
the congratulations over I really must tell Uniden europe that its time they
got their act together and came up with the same goods for europe. We also
would like close call featured scanners. We also have trunked systems. One
of the largest being MPT1327 trunking which is used extensively throughout
europe, UK, Asia, New Zealand and also largely in Australia. Basically world
wide. This system is being implemented more and more daily for use from everyone
from skip hire companies to Bus companies, Railways, Large shopping centre's,
Airports etc. The list of users is endless and growing. I can put you in
touch with someone who would be willing to help with the protocols of this
system. We want it so give it to us please!!
Ok reprimand over, let's get on with the review.
First impressions.
The 396 comes in a box complete PC Cable, 3 "AA" Batteries,
Wrist Strap, AC Adapter, Swivel Belt Clip, Antenna, SMA-BNC Antenna Adaptor,
Manual. On
taking the 396 out of the box I felt a little disappointed, it looked grey
and drab. Removing the protective sticky display protector and it transformed
it no end and now I was looking at a lovely looking little radio that is pleasing
to the eye. Looking more professional than the plasticky look of the 246T
Belt Clip
The most obvious difference is on the back of the unit. The 396
has a funny looking belt clip fixing point. You see the belt clip is a swivel
type fit. This at first sight looks very obtrusive and awkward.
The belt clip stud
Uniden have pushed out the boat with the belt clip. They really
have been working overtime on this design. When I first saw it I thought what
an ugly design. Now I love it. Let me explain a little more. On the back of
the unit is a stud that is held in place by a philips type screw. This can
be fitted into the separate belt clip by sliding it down into it. You know
when it is in properly as you will hear a satisfying click. Once you hear this
you know it is safely locked into place. To remove it from the clip you swivel
the unit upside down and slip it easily out. Lovely. The belt clip itself will
remain in place on your belt or waist of your trousers. This to me was excellent,
I have never had a belt clip on a scanner that I could fully trust. But this
one I have all faith that my scanner is going to be secure. Not only is the
scanner fitting to the clip secure but once you have removed the scanner from
the clip but the clip itself is in fact very reluctant to be removed from your
side.
The belt clip
This can be annoying but for me a small price to pay for the secureness
of the fitting. Not only that due to the design of the belt clip when used
with my watson w-889 swivel joint aerial the radio can be layed on its back
and set at a nice angle for viewing the display. Speaking to another 396
owner he tells me The belt clip is very similar to the Yaesu VX7R for those
who use one, the 396 will fit in the VX7R clip but will
not lock.
Laying down on table
On the sides
of the unit a nice rubber grip strip has been added as found on the Uniden
3300/250D. This I like very much. To the right of the case is the ac power
socket and above this the computer cable socket. On the other side of the
case are the Function and Menu buttons. These are larger and have a more sturdy
feel compared to the 246T ( I never had cause to complain about the ones
used on the 246T anyway so this means the 396 just got better).
Side view
Compared to the 246 (I think we will be doing a lot of comparisons
to the 246 during the course of this review) the 396 is a little taller but
slightly narrower,in fact the quoted statistics are Size: 2.72 in. (W) x 1.26
in. (D) x 4.6 in. (H)
Weight: 0.48 lbs
The keypad comes in the form of 16 buttons silver in colour and
good bold print print that should cater for the poorer sighted user, looking
black in colour until the backlight is displayed and then they glow a nice
shade of blue. The layout is exactly the same as the uniden 246T. Below this
is the loudspeaker. On top of the unit we have a change from the 246 and from
every scanner I know of made by Uniden. It is the BNC connector has
changed to a sma type fitting. I knew this in advance and it was not something
I was happy about. I have plenty of bnc type aerials that I can use to tailor
my listening needs. Vhf for Vhf, UHF for UHF etc. But no spare sma ones .Knowing
that most aerials that come supplied are usually a compromise I was not expecting
much. I never really liked sma anyway as it always looked more prone to breakage
than BNC. Having said that this is probably just a misconception of mine, as
sma is considered by many as a more professional type of connection.
Luckily Uniden provide a sma-bnc adapter. This is not like the
ones I have used before that when connected up your aerial looks like it is
being pushed right up and looks so easy to snap. This is a lovely little converter
(See Image below) Once again Uniden Thank you very much now everyone is happy.
Next to this is a rotary control knob as we have on the 246. However
there the similarities end as the one on the 396 doubles as a rotary control
for navigating through different menus and memory locations. But also pressing
down on it allows it to then become a volume control. Also when this function
is performed the battery voltage is displayed in the upper right corner of
the display. Nice. Now pressing Func button on the side and then simultaneously
pressing down and it now becomes a squelch control button. Giving 15 squelch
settings. This I liked very much. No more accidentally adjusting the squelch
settings. In between the rotary knob and sma we have the earphone socket.
Battery power
The unit comes supplied with Three 2300Mah Ni-Mh Batteries. Once
again uniden thank you, you could have scrimped and gave us lower capacity
ones so I take my hat off to you once again. Ok Batteries charged (That didn't
take long did it?) and away we go
Powering on the backlight I was expecting to be disappointed as
I knew it was going to be a blue colour and I was accustomed to the normal
Uniden Orange backlight which I love. I was pleasantly surprised to find that
I did actually like the blue. Not only that but the keypad lights up too. This
was the first operational advantage it had over the 246. (Note the 246 is a
breeze to use in the dark anyway.) Like the 246 there are differing options
with the backlight. You can set it so that it stays on for 10 seconds,30 seconds,
Squelch, key press and infinite My favourite setting is Squelch whereas the
backlight will come on when the squelch is broken (When someone talks on the
channel).
Some people have said that they would like the backlight to stay
on for the duration of the conversation as opposed to the 5 seconds default.
Yes this would be a good option.
Talking of keypad I have read that the print on the case are prone
to wearing out very quickly I found during the course of this review that
indeed some of the text appeared to be fading. To try this out I wiped my thumb
with a medium amount of pressure over the "ATT" (attenuator) text
and like magic it was gone!!! Just like that as Tommy cooper would have said.
I couldn't believe my eyes. Apparently this is a recognised fault known as
the "silk screen
issue" and if you suffer from it (Only the earlier versions will as later
models have the problem sorted.) and send it back to Uniden they will rectify
the problem by fitting a new case. For me I will leave it as it is. It's not
like there is much information on there that you will miss. A Couple of weeks
with this scanner and you will know what each button does anyway. Speaking
to another 396 owner with a later model confirms to me that indeed the printed
text on his unit does not wipe off.
One gripe I have over the keypad is if you accidentally hit the
lockout button then the channel you were on will be locked out. With the 246
after pressing the lockout button you were asked to confirm you wanted to indeed
lock out the channel. This is not the case with the 396, so you could find
yourself accidentally locking channels out. Incidentally I'm not sure this
is in the manual but if you hold on a channel and keep the lockout button depressed
for 2 seconds all channels in the current system will become unlocked along
with any groups that were deactivated in that system.
The display is improved over the 246T you now get a signal strength
meter. Yes it's only a tiny 5 segment affair but to be fair there is not much
room left on the display with all the other information being shown. I liked
having the strength meter no matter how small. I really did miss it time and
again on the 246. Below this we have 5 lines of text/Numeric's. At the top
we have information of the scanners current state such as "Scan" "Hold" "Search"
.
Below this we have alternating text First displaying the system
name and then the group (The group will only show when held on a channel).
For those of you not
au fait yet with this new system/group scenario it is Uniden's dynamic memory
set up replacing Channel banking that we have come accustomed to over the years.
Front of the unit
This is a new feature which has been utilised by the 246T/396 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/396 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.
Below this we have The alpha tag that you have
given the channel, or if no tag has been allocated then the frequency will
be displayed.
Below this we have the current mode that the channel is using.
fm, am, nfm wfm. Below this is a line of numbers showing the quick keys assigned
to each system and which ones are active. Below this we have another line showing
the groups quick keys and which ones are active. Again for those of you not
familiar. Quick keys are numbers associated with systems and groups. You allocate
each system/group a quick key and you can quickly enable/disable it with a
press of the relevant quick key button number. Very similar to activating/deactivating
banks on your conventional scanner. Whereas the 246 came with 10 quick keys
the 396 has 100!!
The display contrast can be adjusted to your required setting however
I left mine at the factory pre-set setting. Looking from different angles the
lcd display can be seen from most angles but is not as good in this respect
as the 246T which can be viewed from just about any angle. (Unless you are
stood behind it of course).
if you are new to these latest featured Uniden's with
dynamic memory features then You really are going to have to read the manual
and do a fair bit of head scratching. If you are thinking of upgrading from
a 246 then the programming of this radio will be a cinch! The 396 comes with
pre-loaded system/groups for just about every major city in the United states
to get you started. Now I imagine if you are a resident of the US then this
would be a god send but for me in the UK my first priority was to do a reset
of the radio and clear all systems.
First of all I wanted to test the sensitivity
of the 396. First thing I did was remove the fitted rubber duck (I have heard
its only good for 800MHz) Screwing on the aforementioned sma-bnc converter
and attaching my test bench Watson W-889 Telescopic, Quickly entering some
test features into a system that I named...well, "Test" I
found the 396T not very sensitive at all on all bands and was very disappointed.
It wasn't until I played with the squelch settings and found it was preset
on the highest setting that that was the reason for the poor sensitivity.
The squelch setting
is not adjusted by just rotating a knob like most scanners first of all you
press function button on the side of the radio and simultaneously down on
the rotary control knob and from there you can adjust it to whatever you like.
I settled for setting "1" select "0" and all you will
get is the harsh crud that you normally do when squelch is turned right down.
Letting the 396 scan My inputted frequencies it was obvious this little baby
is about as sensitive as it gets. Picking up My local airport comm's both
ground and air on 119Mhz in my kitchen has been a feat no scanner I have
owned to date has been able to do. Right up into the pmr vhf bands this scanner
performed flawlessly. I wanted to try it on the fleetcomm trunked frequencies
at 180MHz (The 246 does not cover this area) I was fascinated when doing
a search to find out it was picking up control channels from miles away.
Again better than other scanners I have owned. I now had to try 70MHz fire
again an area the 246 did not cover. Now my local fire stations have had
many a scanner struggling as the signal is not that strong. I even stood
next to a fire engine once that had it's door open and even that was struggling.
The 396 had the signals booming in. So much in fact that I have now become
a keen fire listening enthusiast.
Trying to add all the information that I had in My 246T was obviously
going to be a slow laborious job. So Luckily for you Uniden have come up with
the goods again and supply with the scanner a computer control cable that fits
to a rs232 port on the back of your pc and then into a port on the scanner.
Also they offer free software to download .
Using software makes life so much easier. For
a scanner with this many memories, alpha tags modes, ctcss/dcs settings etc.
It really is a chore doing by hand. Personally I used ARC396 as I was used
to the arc software in many guises. (Arc780, arc 250 arc 246 etc.)
Each channel can be given a alpha tag, a line
of text up
to 16 characters per name identifying the user. This makes
life so much easier. Also each or any channel can be given a beep alert
one so that when the 396 stops on it a short alert tone is played to alert
you that this channel has become active. This is great for telling you
when your more important frequencies are in use or for when one of those
little used frequencies have come to life. This I liked in the UBC/BC780
and the 246T. However there has been criticism of the level of the volume
of the alerts being a little low. Well Everyone should be happy now as
there are no less than 16 different levels of volume settings that you
can assign to the alerts. Not content with that? Ok then what if I now
tell you there are also 9 different alert tones? Including the original
shrill type that came on the uniden 3300/780/246 Scanners. Plus 8 More
I chose a different tone for whatever importance or the type of transmission.
For police and trunked systems I used the alert tone that sounds like the "Brrpp" you
get when you key up on a trunked radio.
Sample. For the others I
left them on the original tone. Sample .
A feature carried over from the 246 (and other previous uniden's) is Duplicate
Frequency Alert which Alerts you
if you try to enter a duplicate name or frequency already stored in a system.
very useful feature this and saves continuously adding duplicate frequencies
into memory.
You can lock out any system, group,
frequency, or channel while scanning. If you lock out a system or group,
any channels belonging to that system
or group are also locked out. You can lock out up to 200 frequencies. The scanner
skips locked-out frequencies while using the Close Call feature or while searching,
so if you lock a frequency out of search then it will not only be ignored in
subsequent searches but also out of any close call searches.
Like the 246T the 396 has two priority modes. Priority. Where ch's
you have assigned to be a priority ch. when scanning will be checked every
two seconds for activity. The amount of ch's. that can be assigned appears
endless. Note the priority ch's will be checked in ascending order of their
allocated systems/groups. So it maybe wise to put your most important frequencies
in the first systems.
Next we have Priority scan where only the ch's assigned
as priority will be scanned. When using this feature when stopped on a frequency
the 396 will still sample other priority ch's for activity and if any are
found then again if they are in a lower system/bank then they will take priority
over the one you are listening to.
Fire Tone-Out Standby – Lets
you set the scanner to alert you if a two-tone sequential page is transmitted.
You can set up to 10 settings (transmit frequency, tone frequencies) for
standby monitoring. Again of little or any use out of the US.
Attenuator
Yes it has one and yes it works!
Repeater Reverse
Again only of any use in the US.
Delay
All systems can be given a delay time up to 5 seconds,
the choice is yours. However I thought Uniden may have given us a per channel
option or the very least a per group option. There are some users within a
system that I would like a delay before the scanner resumes scanning, longer
than others.
Step sizes
The 396 comes with 12 step size settings. 8.33Khz for airband 10.0khz,
12.5khz, 15.0khz, 20.0khz, 25.0khz, 50.0khz, 100.0khz, 5.0khz,6.25khz 7.5khz,
and an auto setting so most people should be catered for whatever country they
reside in. For most of the time for the UK I left it on 12.5Khz. Another improvement
over the 246T is when a frequency has been entered into memory, if it doesn't
fit the default step size for the band you no longer have to edit the channel
and set it to your required setting. As long as you enter a valid frequency
that fits any of the above settings then it will be entered into memory correctly.
ctcss/dcs
Like the 246T the 396 includes rapid decoding of ctcss/dcs tones.
This works beautifully and is a feature I could not be without today. Also
like the 246T each channel can be set up to search for tones in use. Once found
a few twists of the rotary knob will have the tone stored. When using search
and store tones found will automatically be stored into memory! Nice!
Backlight and Power Display and Keypad Backlight – Makes
the display and keypad easy to see in dim light. You can adjust the back light
so it turns on when you press a key, when squelch breaks during a transmission,
or manually.
Search feature
The search feature of this scanner is again absolutely brilliant in my opinion
.Exactly the same as its predecessor the 246t. 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 the 246 came with Airband, marine,
railroad, CB, FRS/GMRS, Racing, Special, Public safety, Ham and News. With
the 396 you get a couple of extras TV Broadcast and FM broadcast. Of these
only the air, marine and FM broadcast 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 396 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 BCD396T 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.
Another nifty feature is the search with scan feature which is new to me.
Basically if you set this the 396 will scan all your active systems/groups
and once it has completed this it will search a search range of your choice.
I can see this being very handy, for instance at an air show you can scan your
memories and once that is complete, automatically search for any new frequencies
that may be out there. Armed with this and close call you should not miss too
much action.
Close call
Like the 246 the strong selling point of this scanner is going
to be the close call feature. This for me has made the overpriced frequency
counter we loved for so many years obsolete. If you are not yet familiar with
the close call feature then let me explain a little. 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. Unlike the frequency counter
that only tuned to the frequency. You then had to type the frequency into memory
on your scanner and monitor it this way. 9 times out of ten the conversation
will have ended and you are none the wiser who you were listening to. Yes there
were options of connections to a scanner but with extra wires and weight this
was not really practical when out and about.
Once again I wanted to check its
performance against the 246 (The close call on that I found excellent). Also
the close call on the 396 has a much larger frequency coverage so surely
I would be getting more hits? My first trip to work along the Motorway never
really yielded much with a frequency counter or with the 246 on close call.
Sometimes, most times in fact I would get nil results. Well with the 396.
5 miles into my journey and BBC radio WM came crashing through the speaker!!
Looking around me and I could see a pmr tower that it was most likely coming
from. Into Birmingham (this was the outskirts at night so I never usually
get anything) and mobitex signals came crashing in on 440Mhz now I had passed
this spot numerous times with the 246 and it had remained silent. Going for
a meal with my wife in My local city centre surrounded by nightclubs I took
the 396 with me (Romantic aint I ? ) and leaving it on close call search and
store, at the end of the evening and a look in the close call system where
frequencies are stored to I found approximately 6 frequencies stored that were used by various
doormen in the complex. However not all of them had the ctcss/dcs tone stored.
I'm not sure how this compares with the 246 as I rarely used search and store.
Oh by the way search and store is for when you want to discreetly log any found
frequencies into memory. You can set the 246/396 to discreetly save found frequencies/tones
into memory with no audio so no one is alerted to what you are doing. You can
set it to make audio when frequencies are found if you so wish.
Over a week or so trying out the close call feature I became a
little dismayed as it found frequencies in the 85-88MHz broadcast area. The
reason being is it seems just too sensitive on this band. You see as the crow
flies I must be 20 miles away from the very outskirts of Northamptonshire yet
I got a Northamptonshire radio station being found. Not only that with these
signals being wide band then close call quite often got a hit a few hundred
khz either side of the actual frequency several times. Luckily Uniden have
provided a setting where any broadcast signals found can be ignored.
Although the 396 comes with a pager screen for screening out pager
signals this must be remembered that this is for the US frequencies used by
paging signals and will not work in europe/UK. For us we will have to manually
Lockout these frequencies from a close call search.
A great
improvement for me with the close call feature is the Alerts that can be
set up. You see with the 246 I set my alert signal (For when a frequency is
found) using the default alert and for the backlight to come on. Now this was
a bit of a let down as the alert tone had one default setting and for me was
too damn quiet. With the 396 you can use any of the alert tones I mentioned
earlier for channels. I selected the one that sounds like a siren. In fact
Staffordshire police used to use this very tone on their trunked system to
alert all patrols that a immediate response call was coming in before they
passed the message. I set it to the volume I require and now I no longer miss
a close call found message. Sample The extended
coverage of the 396 over the 246 came into it's own when I was alerted to a
182MHz band III mpt1327 trunked system control channel. I had always suspected
the location of the transmitter but now the 396 had confirmed it for me. With
the 246 due to its limited frequency coverage I never managed to confirm it.
Like the 246 certain sporadic data systems were not picked up by close call
but like I said then they are of little listening interest anyway.
A main gripe with the 246 was that when a close call frequency
has been found, you had to hit a button to display the channel and press hold
to hold onto the freq before it resumed searching again. Well the 396 is the
same in as much as having to hit a button to display the frequency, but if
you press the hold button once when a close call freq has been found it will
now hold on to it until you manually resume the search. There must be a reason
why Uniden have not changed the way you have to hit a button before the freq
is displayed. The reason probably being if you don't have an alert set up then
just a frequency displayed you may not take much notice. Also with the 246
you only got 5 seconds after a close call frequency stopped transmitting to
hit a button otherwise all would be lost. With the 396 there is numerous permutations
of delay time right up to infinity so everyone should be happy here.
Audio AGC
This is a new feature of the 396. At first I was unsure of what
it was meant to do but in a nutshell Audio AGC is when you listen to some signals,
normally close ones the volume may sound higher than some simplex ones who
are at the edge of range or just further away.
If you have AGC on then all signals should produce an equal volume in your
speaker, very useful if you use a headset or earphones.
SAME Weather alert.
Not used here so this feature was not tested.
Battery Life
As previously stated the 396 comes complete with 3 Ni-Mh rechargeable
AA in size. I did not use the supplied ac adapter to charge the batteries for
two reasons. One I like to always have a spare set ready so I have an external
charger charging another set of cells whilst the 396 is using the other set.
Two because the ac adapter is not compatible with the UK 3 pin set up. Also
the voltage regulations are different. The 3 supplied batteries gave approx
8.5 hours of use. A nifty little feature of the 396 is the capability to
read the battery voltage (How much life is left) this is done by pressing down
on the rotary knob as if you were adjusting the volume. A fresh set of cells
gave a reading of about 4.06 and the battery warning icon comes on
at about a reading of about 3.49. strangely lower capacity batteries I had
(2100mah) Gave a reading of 4.20 when fresh and a reading of 3.49 when depleted.
A nice feature for me is that with keypad beeps turned off, then you don't
have to endure the continuous beeping every couple of seconds reminding you
that your batteries need replacing. For me I find that annoying as it interferes
with my listening. However the drawback here is that if you do not keep an
eye on the display then you will wonder why the scanner has switched itself
off.
The keypad beep can be adjusted to tailor your needs should you
require it. The audio levels range from "Off", Auto and then 1-15. For most
of the time I had it set to off.
Trunking
Of course one of the other main features of the 396 is it's trunking
capabilities. We are now into the Trunktracker IV guise. The 246 is a trunktracker
III but the 396 has full APCO 25 digital trunking system capability. Unfortunately
I am in no situation to try this as there are no such systems in use in my
area. However I did try the Trunking of Staffordshire Fire brigade on a motorola
VHF type II system.
Unfortunately the Uniden 246T has not got the capability to do
this due to the 12.5KHz step size used on that system (A firmware upgrade has
become available for the 246 which should now make this compatible I would
appreciate any confirmation).
Compared to the 246 there is a lot more information on the display
when in trunking mode. I used the 246 a couple of weeks ago in London on the
Met radio system used by the Police and all you get on the display is ID scan
or ID search and a talkgroup or ID alpha tag displayed. With the 396 you get
the above ID scan or ID search and alpha tag for a talkgroup (If you set one
up) but also you get the signal strength meter giving you an indication how
strong the signal is, the control ch frequency displayed and the frequencies
that speech is taking place on. Very nice. Also I set a audio alert on the
talkgroup's so as soon as they key up it gives the Brrrpp! that officers get
when they key on a motorola trunked radio. This alerts me right away that my
trunking system/group is active. The 396 handled this system extremely well
(Like other uniden's I have used such as 780 3300/250D). Scanning programmed
ID's and searching for them is easily alternated by simply pressing the "Scan"
button. When a new Talkgroup ID is found pressing enter gives you the choice
of entering into a System you have already set up or into a quick save trunked
system.
I have just been in touch with someone that has a APCO 25 system
in his area of the UK however that system is encrypted and he gave me the following
information.
"ACPO 25 will only work if CTCSS search is set to OFF, I tried
it here on a USAF ACPO25 sig and the white noise that i assumed was ACPO25
goes into something a bit more like voice, (at the bottom of a well) but as
its encrypted you get ENC on the display. so at least i now know that it is
indeed an ACPO25 sig." " Whilst on ACPO25 if you press the volume knob twice
whilst holding the function key you get the error rate on the display,"
I think it is obvious to say that I really loved this radio and
my comparisons over the Uniden BC246T show it to be a better performer in a
lot of aspects. Especially VHF reception. The added features such as the beep
alerts stand out for me and the added close call features such as delay times
and only having to hit the hold button once as opposed to twice.
I could go on forever about the many features of this scanner.
Each time I am at work I think of another feature that I must mention. But
I can't go on forever and you would probably fall asleep if I did (If you haven't
already) But one thing I must mention before I go. The supplied aerial, I tried
it after 2 weeks and found that its not too bad after all. Admittedly it's
not in the same league as the Watson W-889 but I found it adequate on most
VHF-UHF type listening and didn't do too bad on 31MHz either.
But then it should be better it costs a lot more than the 246T
which for me is still a brilliant scanner for its price and will no doubt continue
to sell by the lorry load. Here in the UK they are in big demand. I say again
come on uniden europe get your act together we in UK/Europe want close call!!
We also want mpt1327 trunking!!
So is this the scanner for you if you already own a 246? Depends
what you want out of a scanner. If you want the best frequency coverage,Need
Military air, (Wow imagine that, you are at a air show and an unknown frequency
comes up on close call! Awesome!) best features and are a serious scanner hobbyist
then yes you will want this. What about me? Well I sold my 246 within 2 hours
of using the 396!
So how much will it cost? Well scannermaster.com sell them for $519.95 which
when equated to UK pounds works out at about £285 but remember you will if
be hit with import duty on receipt of the unit. Scannermaster are more than
welcome to take orders from overseas.
Support
There are two yahoo groups that I will recommend one for Europe/UK
one stateside
Click to join BC246T-BCD396TEuro
Click to join BCD396T
09/05
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