Uniden BCD996T 6000 Channel Mobile Trunking Scanner with GPS Support and APCO-25

Amazon Customer Reviews

(5 out of 5)

Uniden's Finest Scanner

Uniden's Finest Scanner

There is no question that the Uniden BCD996T is the finest and most feature rich scanner Uniden has ever made. With so many features, it would take a novel to talk about them all but I will still give you a nice overview after my 2 months of use.

Alert For New Scanner Users - I will frankly say that the BCD996T is complex and I think any new user will be overwhelmed with this scanner. Unless you really want to devote a significant amount of time learning this scanner, you really should consider another model.

Now for the review...

As you would expect, this is a fully capable scanner that will cover all conventional, trunked and digital frequencies and systems used by public safety, business, government, aircraft, military and armature radio. Like most higher end Uniden scanners, it uses dynamic memory and the 6000 frequencies will be more than enough for all but the most hard core urban scanner enthusiast. This scanner has all of the priority scan and WX (weather) alerts you also would expect.

The BCD996T was the first scanner released by Uniden that is GPS capable. (The recently released BCT15 by Uniden is the only other GPS capable scanner. It is almost identical with 2 major exceptions. There are fewer channels and no digital capabilities.) You may wonder how a GPS can improve scanning but if you are a mobile user that regularly of even semi regularly drives over an area that is covered by multiple systems, the GPS capability will be come very apparent.

Imagine driving between 2 cities 100 miles apart on a very regular basis. You program city A and city B and enter a GPS coordinate for each system. On a non GPS enabled scanner, you either can both systems all the time which slows down the over all scanning or you have to lock out and unlock each system as appropriate. If these are metropolitan areas, then you will have lots of banks that need locked or unlocked. This is quite a hassle and can even be dangerous wile driving.

Now attach any NEMA compliant GPS (Garmin, Magellan, or many others) and as you get away from City A, the system becomes locked and as you are near City B, it becomes unlocked. This feature is really great for long trips. You can program 1000 miles of systems into the system and have it scan only the nearby systems as you travel.

The GPS also works with multiple sites for one system. The BCD996T allows you program one system with multiple sites which is new to scanning. For example, in Indiana, the state government uses a single trunked system for all public agencies including law enforcement. Each county has a tower (repeater) for the system. You can put the entire 90+ sites under one system.

Enter the GPS coordinates for each site and as you travel the state, you only scan the nearby towers. This makes for very efficient scanning.

You can also program POI (Point of Interest) into the scanner and as you approach, an audible and visual alert will happen. This can be a great way to remind you of dangerous intersections or your favorite place to eat. (I have not really used this feature at all since it doesn't give you actual directions to the POI.)

One negative of the GPS enabled multi site system is if you take your scanner in the house and are not using the GPS, you are scanning everything. You can either program certain towers for when you are home or use a GPS emulator to trick the scanner.

I do want to mention you can skip the GPS programming and not enable it and have a great scanner but the GPS is one major thing that stands out.

The unit has "Close Call" which can find nearby frequencies in use. This is handy when you want to discover something new but don't know what to search. I almost get a hit on the fast food drive thru in the first minute in line. I also found the frequency for the utility which was said to not be using radios any more in favor of Nextel phones.

The LCD screen is very large and readable and has an amber and green backlight color choice.

The scanner includes a programming cable and free software from Uniden. It is all but impossible to program the scanner by hand due to the complexity and number of options. (You might even want a 3rd party software package which allows importing frequencies from a well knows online database of frequencies.)

The unit is a standard 1 DIN size and a sleeve is included as is a mobile mounting bracket. There is a 12 volt power adapter included too for mobile use.

One major complaint would be the usual poor antenna included. Uniden really needs to send an antenna that fits on the scanner better.

I have found the BCD996T to have excellent receiving qualities and the automatic gain control helps level out the sound level. A simple outdoor antenna pulls in public safety 30 to 60 miles away.

If you have the money and time to devote to this scanner, it is worth every penny.

(5 out of 5)

WOW!! What a Machine

Not for the faint of heart. You will have to learn a whole new way of programming with this baby, but once you do you will never turn back to the old machine again. Comes with Ac Cord,Dc Cord, brackets,screws and a whole bunch of other things to get you going. Make sure you go to the uniden web site and update the internal software.

(4 out of 5)

Great Scanner

The engineered design being versatile, whether desktop or installed into a vehicle dashboard, is a great feat!

In my opinion, Uniden should have created their BCD996T control software using Cygwin/Gtk to compile all, Win32,Linux & Mac OSX binaries. Instead, Uniden only provides Win32 binaries of their software.

(Not to fret, Linux/Mac users can run the BCD996T scanner software under Wine. Some but not all Windows bugs are eliminated using Wine.)

I prefer versatille code, so the only reason I'm giving it 4 stars and not 5 stars!

Amazon next day shipping is great! ;-)

(5 out of 5)

Great scanner if you are willing to spend extra!

This is a fantastic scanner. It has some really neat features if you are willing to spend that much. I suggest buying a USB cable to program it with because the cable it comes with does not fit into many new computers. Otherwise, no other complaints! Great scanner!

(5 out of 5)

Great Scanner but poor tech support

Great Scanner but poor tech support from Uniden. Had to send out to get programed from scannermaster.