I purchased this scanner for a pretty good price by shopping around, as there sure were a wide range of prices, and the prices were going up and down like a roller coaster LOL.
I used a free, downloadable, software program called FreeScan to program the scanner using frequencies from Radio Reference, and chose what counties around me that I wanted to listen to, basically my home county plus one county around my home county, but I think that without using the NAC codes on P25 that I also get "traffic" around other parts of the state also.
I do have a couple of issues with the BCD996P2 that I need to learn how to cope or deal with, and that is, I can't seem to get out of the Close Call function or feature, even turning it off, or setting it to Off, and even tried turning the scanner off then back on again, and still it goes back to the Close Call "mode," sometimes stopping on a previously received, "Close Call Hit" frequency, and stayng there until I put it back to scan mode, so I hesitate to use that mode, and sometimes I have the same problem trying to get out of the Close Call Search and Auto-Store function, mode, or feature, and a couple of times I actually deleted the, "Close Call Hit" frequency so the scanner will go back to scanning.
The other issue is that I also have one thing that's sort of irritating, and that is, even though I've enabled AGC for both Analog and Digital modes, the audio level differs greatly, meaning one channel sounds low or quiet, another channel sounds high or very loud with some distortion, and some are normal or average, and it seems that all I can do is listen along, and when someone sounds overly loud, I need to adjust the individual channel by setting the Volume Offset Level to a -2 or so, or even occasionally a +1 or +2 if a channel sounds a bit low.
I downloaded a small software program called Audio TestSet, a link off of Radio Reference, that shows the incoming audio level, and I've been setting the audio level on each individual channel sort of going by what levels I see with that program, and I have no idea how long it's going to take to adjust the audio level of each individual channel, since the AGC doesn't seem to work properly for me.
As far as missing a part of the beginning of a signal goes, you can shorten the P25 Wait Time I think it's called or set it to 0, as the default is 400 MS, and that's how long the scanner waits detecting a P25 signal before opening the squelch, so if receiving an Analog signal, especially if you have the channel set to All, instead of Analog, the delay will happen, so you can either set the P25 Wait Time to a shorter value, or maybe to 0, or set the channel for the mode you want to hear, and actually, what I've done for those channels where you could hear both an Analog and a Digital signal, is to put the same frequency in two times, entering one or both frequencies manually, and just have one set to Digital and P25, and the other "duplicate" frequency to Analog, and I set the P25 Wait Time to 0, so the squelch opens right away, but when using the FreeScan program and Radio Reference, I saw that there were duplicate frequencies showing both Analog and Digital modes, so I didn't really have to deal with that.
However, I also get a little irritated when trying to use the WX priority, because if I enable that, then every couple of seconds or so I miss a part of a word when listening to a signal, so I don't use WX Priority...but I can get used to everything except the wide audio level differences that I've been experiencing.
It's just that the differences in every audio signal on each of the channels is sort of irritating, but maybe once I get all of the channels set individually, then things will be OK, as I stream the audio from the scanner to Broadcastify, and every time an overly loud signal comes along I lose a listener, and I need to press the hold button so I can set the Volume Offset to a -2 or whatever.
I've adjusted to everything except the volume issue on each individual channel as the AGC just doesn't seem to work very well or at all even though I have enabled it for both Analog and Digital signals.
I do like the BCD996P2 for the most part, and it seems to work well as far as receiving signals go having it connected to a G6-440 antenna up about 20 feet off of the ground, but not sure whether I'll update it to DMR or not, but I probably will.
I at first didn't see anyone around here using DMR except for the electric company, and I didn't need to listen to that, but I now see others using DMR so I now need to decide whether I want to upgrade to DMR or not.
I can save $15.00, if I do the DMR upgrade myself with a download instead of sending it to them to have them do the upgrade, so I'll probably do the upgrade myself. |