Uniden BCD996P2 Digital Mobile TrunkTracker V Scanner, 25,000 Dynamically Allocated Channels, Close Call RF Capture Technology, 4-Line Alpha display, Base/Mobile Design, Phase 2, Location-Based Scanning

Probably not the best selection for my first digital scanner. Its not easy to program, I ended up paying for a subscription to radio reference. Anothing thing I wish I thought about before buying. At the time I bought this I pay 383.00 then realized that then gps is vitial in my situation. Another 100 bucks there. Hindsight I should have bought a newer model with gps built in and the radio pee programmed. Dont get me wrong, it seems like a solid radio.

Excellent, solid construction, could be complicated if you are new to scanning. The newest update of the excellent bct15/996 lineup, uniden really has a good system there and being a Phase 2 digital this scanner be good for the foreseeable future. If you are new to scanning, this receiver might not be the best place to start, however if you locale uses digital trunked systems I would recommend jumping into this radio. If your local doesnt use digital systems you might be better off getting a bct15x ([very similar to this radio minus digital], if locale has analog trunked systems) or a bc125at if there are not any trunked systems. You can check what your local services use in the radioreference.com frequency database. This scanner is capable of listening to police UHF VHF, fire UHF VHF, railroads, aviation 118-130 MHZ ish, GMRS/MURS/FRS(walkie talkies) 460 MHZ ish, Marine band, weather band(noaa) 160 ish mhz, HAM radio, state police/highway patrol operating in the 30-40 mhz range, cb radio. This scanner does not have ssb so its not a good solution to listen to longer wave ham or shortwave broadcasts. Like I said it can be complicated, however once you understand it, it becomes a very powerful tool. I had little trouble with it but I had previously used scanners so I wasnt overloaded with the radio mumbo jumbo, all I needed to learn was how to operate the radio itself. A good place to learn the radio mumbo jumbo would be radioreference.com. Compared to the radioshack/whistler units may have 20 scan lists (newer models have more I believe). While they are not equivalent, in conventional systems with the uniden you have 10 group quick keys per system and 100 systems with quick keys all of which can be independently toggled. So in theory you can have 1000 scanning bank toggles just by using groups and system quick keys. Trunked systems are programmed slightly different but afford plenty of customization. And work around systems and groups. Also this radio has the ability to search for talkgroups within trunked systems. You can technically get more than 1000 groups/100 systems into this receiver using tags but the quick keys seem easiest and I would be shocked if you could use them all for you regular scanning (obviously if you wanted to program your whole state things would get pretty full, however you would be able to get a pretty large coverage. I have the entirety of California Highway Patrol programmed in mine(I use 1 system for each division), as well as 3 counties [Stanislaus, Merced, San Luis Obispo] (including most cities in them) (fire, pd, sheriff, ambulance services, HAM and aviation) and Im only using 30 systems out of 100. And those are fairly spread out to allow minute adjustments in which departments/services Im listening to, where as if you condensed them you could use far less than 30 systems. Receive is very good. I operate mostly conventional systems in the UHF (Police, Fire, Ham), VHF (Sheriff, fire, ham, aviation) area, but have a trunked motorola 800mhz which does very well, and also use it to scan for CHP mobile extenders (handheld radios) which operate as a conventional p25, it receives those no problem. For CHP I primarily use my other scanner a BCT15x because I have it attached to an antenna optimized for around 40 mhz however for my bcd966p2 I use a larsen triband 150/450/800 and it works great at pulling in vhf/uhf/and 800mhz it even pulls in chp in the 40mhz quite well for a small antenna.

Its great for analog and digital. I got the DMR upgrade and that works great too. There is a known issue with simulcast trunked systems, but there arent any of those very near me, so thats not an issue I have to contend with. Its a little less user-friendly than the HomePatrol series. It does do Phase II, which is nice because my state has switched to a statewide PII system.

Performed as expected

no help ,call a few time ... help desk said you need to learn the ferq,,,also need to down loan the site then do the steps ,,,but they would not help me when i had the site and all the step i needed to help me ...i told them i was very new can you do the step with me ,,they said understand what it do frist ,are you be a deer in the head light

This is an excellent scanner. The only problem that I have is the auto adapter is not very durable and it is already broken, and the plug seemed too short to make a connection in my Kia.. There are complaints ones have made about the difficulty programming the scanner. Yes it is difficult. Yes there is a learning curve. I just got the scanner last week so I have a lot to learn with this thing. Im not ready to complain about it just yet because there is plenty of information on YouTube that thankfully people have taken the time to post. My thanks to them for putting forth the effort to help.

I’m sure this is really a great product, but it’s defiantly NOT easy to set up. Lots of add-in’s to pay for. Apparently so difficult to set up, they offer an option to send your new scanner into the service shop to have it programmed by the experts. I don’t see that as a plus.

none

This is a review of the Uniden BCD996P2 system. I am a US licensed amateur extra radio operator,, so I have some experience with radios and their operation. I am also a software developer, avid linux user and advocate. The programming aspects of the system did live up to what many of the reviews stated, it is not for the feint of heart. To get any P25 systems into this system you will be well advised to use some programming software. I had to create a windows system on a spare laptop in order to get the firmware update software package to work with the device (strike one) Once updated I attempted to setup my countys government P25 system (phase 1), specifically for the fire department (no, they were not encrypted channels). I programmed the device by hand with no joy. I downloaded multiple software packages that worked with the scanner to try to automatically load the configuration into the system. I even subscribed to radio reference to take advantage of their configuration file downloads. Still no Joy. (strike two). I spent an entire weekend trying various methods to program this scanner. I tried just about every permutation of options that I could find. For some reason there is something that the local P25 system is doing that this scanner appears to be incapable of decoding. I was able to get multiple other P25 (phase 1 and 2) systems working, every other system that I tried and was with in listening distance in fact worked. (strike three) There is next to no online documentation, and it would appear that Uniden is abandoning support of this product. After all of this, I returned the product, totally disappointed. (gave it 2 stars, because it worked for some sites well enough, but the not for the system I intended to use it with) I looked at the next higher cost option, but at $700, and with such a miserable experience with this $400 scanner I opted to buy an $30 USB SDR device and try my hand at open source, which worked perfectly (on linux!). I can put up with windows only options for programming the system, and complex programming requirements. But for $400 the device should just work out of the box.

Love this scanner. Havent had one for a while but since I retired I decided jump back in. I didnt even attempt to program it manually. I used the FreeScan software from the Radioreference.com site and it worked perfectly. Was up and running in less than a half hour.