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

So I am a newbie to this hobby and decided to buy a scanner just to see what was going on whenever the city fire alarm goes off and to listen to police chatter in my free time. After a few days of research I settled on this model even though there were a lot of people saying it was extremely hard to program....Yes it is without help but I programmed all the local ones I needed thanks to a few you tube videos, freescan and radio reference . Took a few hours to learn how to block unwanted channels and other useful things but wasnt too bad. You can pretty much throw away the directions Uniden sent with it and just you tube or google everything. Product came early and as described.

This scanner is capable of receiving the majority of everything (not encrypted) in the Police/Fire/Public Service/Military Air/Gov/Misc bands in either analog or digital modes. It receives APCO P-25 digital (both Phase I & II) signals great for me with a stock antenna but I am in a good location to receive two actual P-25 trunk radio system site towers with good signal levels. With digital 800 Mhz signals though, you may need less antenna. About 6.5 inches in length is a good 800 Mhz antenna. With an attic mount ST-2 antenna on a tv antenna booster, I can receive analog signals 60 plus miles away cleanly but thats flat terrain to the top of the Willis Tower. If you have marginal (P-25) 800 Mhz signal levels you wont get many signal bars lit up, it wont trunk track right and you may see talkgroups show up on the display but no audio is heard/garbled/breaks up because it cant decode the digital modulation, or it just might be encrypted. When you get trunking lock on a control channel in APCO P-25 mode, the actual frequency will show up (small) on the display, otherwise you just get NFM on the display which means youre not tracking the system and it will not work. But once you get lock on a control channel, if it all works correctly, it grabs talkgroups at will and you will have to label them or sort out what you wish to really listen to as there will be plenty of (channels=talkgroups) at busy times. With digital trunking systems, it depends on the tower near you having the talkgroup channels you want to hear available on that tower. As far as digital trunking signals go with any digital scanner, all bets are off. The signals fade out at times, some of these RF tower signals get more/less power alloted to them on each tower. In order to fully monitor one P-25 system, the scanner may have to listen to 6 or more towers (in one system) that are all directions from you with varying RF power levels on each frequency, in order to properly receive ALL of your chosen channel (talkgroups) in that Police system you want to hear. If this seems too complicated, well it is. There is a Computer Control channel on P25 digital trunking systems that tells the police system computer what frequency to use or hop to (each split second) and you may get that individual frequencys (talkgroup) good/bad/gone off various towers (and all at nearly the same time yet!) This is called simulcasting distortion and makes listening to any APCO P-25 digital Police trunking radio system extremely hard for any new digital scanner. And the nasty winds, rain, leaf foliage too all mess havoc with these signals. No getting around this. You may be in a good/bad location, it all depends. You may have missed details in your programming, yes I did too many times. Could be your location, your antenna, your programming, proximity to too many other site towers, winds, (high winds or hot/humid air seem nasty on narrow P-25 signals), or the big TV/Radio/Cell Towers nearby with mega kw watts etc. It is a huge complicated mess even for an expert radio engineer to deal with. A lot of it is...trial and error with P-25 digital. Does it track control signal? No. Move antenna/radio a few inches, try again. But the BCD996P2 (once setup right) excels at receiving everything great! This scanner works Great for me in my location even on the factory antenna. And the bandscope mode is fabulous too. I love it. It is up to you to sort out the critical-channel-programming first before you use it. Study the Radio Reference website, it might take time. I would advise to use a computer to program this scanner, otherwise youll just pull your hair out. You cant program this scanner by using zip codes like some others. Freescan (sixspotsoftware) is a great Free program to use, I use it, others exist too. You can plug the scanner into your PC via the included USB cable. My Win 7 PCs found it right away (You setup Control Scanner, Set com port to auto find in Freescan and it should find your scanner on a com port. Then you upload your channels/lineups to the scanner) But first you need to find the frequencies in the Radio Reference website. Freescan also has a Cut N Paste frequency import method which works fine as you select from database info. An outside scanner antenna used with at least an RG-6 cable is optimal for the best reception with this extended coverage scanner to hear everything. I also use a cheap (75 ohm) TV antenna signal booster with 18 db gain, on 50ft RG-6 and a 4 port ant splitter. I have a lot of RF signal levels (using bandscope mode) but no overload that I can see or hear. But for local signals (20 miles or less) you probably will do just as well with the back of set stock antenna, for both analog channels and digital systems. For 800 Mhz specific signals, use a 800 Mhz antenna like a Remtronix. The scanner can be used in the car, it comes with 2 DC power cords, one with a lighter plug, it has a nice bracket and includes the AC adapter. This unit is the base model of the portable BCD325P2 hand held scanner. They are the same to operate/use and program. This 996P2 model has a bottom fire speaker with a deep bass audio sound on digital systems and it sounds like a loudness circuit in a stereo, compared to my RS-652 desktop scanner which has a tinnier sound. You can choose one of 7 colors for the display and it has many signal adjustments for each channel/system, which is why you need patience. You can upgrade this scanner now to receive ProVoice, Mototrbo and DMR but Uniden charges an extra fee for each one. I do not have these upgrades and may not get. These new digital scanners are frustration devices to many people. For the expert, yes, this scanner is marvelous, you can hear everything except Encrypted signals. Be sure you have days/weeks of time and patience to spend with this thing first though. The learning curve is very steep. It is not plug it in, put in a few channels and listen like in the old days. Every channel has about a dozen parameters to setup first, a P-25 digital system may have 2 dozen parameters to setup first, then one dozen items per channel on top of this. This scanner does Not use an SD memory card to store channels/data to. These can be problematic and cause odd errors of all kinds. But the BCD996P2 scanner is a techs dream to use (once programmed properly) and a upgraded cousin to my all time favorite pal the Uniden BCD396XT portable scanner. But this scanner is still quite a challenge for anyone to setup/operate/use. Five stars because it is simply a phenomenal scanner (with exceptional abilities) targeted to mostly expert scanner junkies.

I was expecting a bit more for the $$$ its only flaw I can find is the audio drop outs when Priority scanning is active and or Weather scanning is active, Apparently the unit needs a lot of time to check for activity in the background to the point that it makes listening almost unbearable, I would hope in the future Uniden can do this fast enough in the background without the 1 second dropouts, It would be almost perfect otherwise. Yes this scanner is difficult to program buying software and a Subscription to RadioReference for the frequencys is a must! or you could be programming it for days or weeks depending on were you live. were I am there is a proprietary 800 system that is close to impossible to program manually.

Performed as expected

I bought a 2nd one. this is a p25 digital analog rig. compatible with the new Oregon Radio Project p25 700mhz system in my home state.

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.

Excellent performance on most systems even with the small, cheap antenna that comes with it. I can receive many transmissions from dozens of miles away and in my basement. Programming with software is a must, a subscription to radioreference and programming software will get you running very quickly. Very satisfied with this radio even though I havent completely mastered using it. Using it is difficult to understand at first so if you want a simple scanner (if such a thing exists) get something else...otherwise its probably the best mobile scanner you can buy.