Uniden BC246T Owner's Manual download pdf

70 MONITORING TIMES July 2006

he new Uniden BCD996T base/mobile

is truly a marvel of modern scanning

technology. Released hot on the heels of

the popular Uniden BCD396T handheld scanner,

many of the innovative features included in that

scanner can be found in this new Uniden release.

Some of the features have been expanded and

updated, and a host of new features have been

added to this new base/mobile unit.

❖ Case, Controls and Antenna

The BCD996T is the first new tool up of a

base/mobile unit by Uniden in over four years.

Not only has the case changed compared to earlier

models, but changes have been made in the RF

sections as well. However, the lineage of this

unit’s firmware comes from the BCD396T. The

996 case is much smaller than its 796 predecessor,

measuring 7.2 (W) x 5.9 (D) x 2.2 (H) inches and

weighs in at 3.46 lbs without mounting bracket.

There is an orange or green backlight system

(user selectable) for the 1-1/8 by 2-1/8-inch (64

x 128 full dot matrix) liquid crystal display and

the keyboard. You can turn off backlighting or

set three levels for each color without going into

the scanner menu system by pressing the volume

control on the front of the unit.

Controls/Switches on the 996 include a

knurled rotary encoder knob (with push switch

for function operations), volume control with

power on/off switch (with push switch for back

light control), and squelch control (with push

switch for Close Call mode).

❖ Checking under the hood

Looking inside the radio, we found a world

of scanning capability. Here are some features

that will be familiar to BC246T/BCD396T own-

ers:

• Close Call RF capture technology can set the

scanner so it detects and provides informa-

tion about nearby radio transmissions. In a

head to head test between the 246, 396 and

the 996, the 996 was superior.

• Dynamically allocated channel memory

was ﬁrst introduced in the BC246T. See the

December 2004 issue or go to www.moni-

toringtimes.com/htm/mtuniden246t.pdf

for a detailed description of how this works.

This type of scanner memory can be orga-

nized so that the scanner operation more

closely matches how radio systems actually

work, making it easier to program and use

the scanner. Through the menu system you

can determine how much scanner memory

is being used and how much is left. Like its

396 sibling, the 996 has a whopping 6,000

memory locations for programming frequen-

cies, talkgroups, and alpha tags.

• There are over 500 agencies (133 systems)

preprogrammed in the scanner covering

police, ﬁre, and ambulance operations in

30 metro areas and 12 states in the U.S.,

plus some of the more popular digital trunk

systems, and a selection of nationwide al-

locations.

• One hundred Quick keys let you quickly select

systems and groups by using the keypad.

This makes it easy to listen to or quickly lock

out systems or groups. There are 13 Service

search frequency ranges preprogrammed for

public safety, news, amateur radio, marine,

railroad, military and civilian air, CB radio,

FRS/GMRS, racing, TV broadcast, FM broad-

cast, and special searches.

• Personal Computer (PC) Control allows you

to transfer programming data to and from

the 996 and a PC, or actually control the

scanner’s operation using your computer.

Uniden will make available for download

their UASD PC control/programming soft-

ware and a free registration key via their

company website at www.uniden.com.

• Cloning over-the-air lets you clone all pro-

grammed data, the contents of the scanner’s

memory, menu settings, and other param-

eters over a user-selectable frequency from

a PC to one or more 996 scanners. Cloning is

also possible from one 996 to another using

a serial computer cable, null modem adapter

and gender changer (not included), and the

computer interface cable included with each

unit.

• Adaptive Digital Threshold automatically

sets the digital decode threshold for APCO

digital systems. You can also manually adjust

or reset to default digital reception levels.

Analog and digital audio automatic gain

control (AGC) helps automatically balance

the volume level between different radio

systems both digital and analog.

• Fire Tone-out Standby lets you set the scanner

to sound an alert if a two-tone sequential

page commonly used on ﬁre dispatch fre-

quencies is transmitted. You can set up to 10

settings (transmit frequency, tone frequen-

cies, tone duration and tone gap), then select

one of the programmed positions for standby

monitoring and alerting.

• Broadcast Screen sets the scanner so it ignores

Close Call or search hits on FM/TV broadcast

frequencies, including known pager frequen-

cies. The custom screen lets you input up to

10 frequency ranges that the scanner will

ignore during Close Call or search opera-

tion.

Some of the other features found in the

BCD996T include: Scan/Search delay, a 20 dB

attenuator, repeater reverse, channel alert, search

with scan operation, enhanced custom alerts, bet-

ter automatic channel step selection (frequency

steps of 5, 6.25, 7.5, 8.33, 10, 12.5,15, 20, 25, 50

or 100 kHz for manual mode and search modes),

text tagging, data skip, duplicate frequency entry

alert, memory backup, frequency and talkgroup

auto store, and priority scan/priority channel

scan.

Like many of the recently released Uniden

scanner models, the 996 can perform a NOAA

weather band search, SAME weather alert, and

weather priority scan. There is also a nearly

instant CTCSS/DCS tone search capability that

can identify up to 50 CTCSS tones and 104 DCS

codes in the scan, search and Close Call modes.

There are a lot of other BC996T features

that BCD396T owners will recognize, far too

many to include in this review. You can get more

information on all of the BCD996T features by

viewing a copy of the owner’s manual on the

Grove Enterprises website at: www.grove-

ent.com/BCD996Tman.pdf

❖ Trunk Tracking Capability

The BCD996T is a Trunk Tracker IV

The Uniden BCD996T

A Marvel of 21

Scanning Technology

By Larry Van Horn, N5FPW

Assistant Editor Monitoring Times

IRST LOOK

CONSUMER RADIOS AND ELECTRONICS

MT Rating: 4-3/4 Stars

Photo courtesy of www.rigpix.com

1 2 3

Summary of Contents

Page 1

70 MONITORING TIMES July 2006The new Uniden BCD996T base/mobile is truly a marvel of modern scanning technology. Released hot o

Page 2 - ❖ Overall Rating

July 2006 MONITORING TIMES 71model scanner. This lets you follow unencrypted conversations on analog Motorola, Motorola mixed mode

Page 3

July 2006 MONITORING TIMES 73the logging function, the R7000 can perform a form of scanning. ❖ Logging Other tuning methods include t

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Uniden BC246T Owner's Manual

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