InterceptRadio.com Forums

I just bought a Uniden BC246t scanner as my first scanner. I'm trying to program channels and am getting confused. I downloaded bc-tool as the uniden software didn't seem very good.

I live on Vashon Island, WA and am most interested in listening to King County sheriff(I believe precinct 4)
but after I figure everything out I plan to program all king county codes and Police/sheriff for all of WA state.

I'm pretty good with technology but am having trouble with this, this is my first scanner and only knowledge is some researching before I bought it. I'd really appreciate a hand.

i would assume that the problem is with the pasting into a conventional system in bct rather then a trunk

IMO freescan will deal with system pasting from web a lot better then bctool, bc tool is the best monitoring AID application.

however I have included a file that you can save to your radio with all the local stuff that might also help you put some sense to the programming

note that I do something funky with my 246 I have the 3 originally separate systems (KC-Valley EPSCA, Seattle) on the same group key and two are always locked out, this gives me the ability to lock into one Cell with out getting data from the other cells (helpfull for me might not be for you) generically however this should get you listening to things right away, if you get confused delete the MultiSystem on EPSCA and MultiSystem on Seattle group ID's

_________________
If I had an antenna, I would; but I can only transmit on 160 meters.
_____
DE K7MHI

Thanks, I will check out that file.

I downloaded Freescan which seems to work better.

I copied the king county sheriff talkgroup info it and loaded it into the scanner. When I scroll through systems on the scanner "King County PD" shows up as a system but when I try to scan just that system it says "nothing to scan" instead of scanning through the talk groups.

However I was able to easily copy WSP frequencies into freescan, load them onto the scanner and scan.
It seems like I'm just having problems with trunked systems.

here is some steps for freescan set up for some simple trunking for KC

copy this

851.8125
867.8625
868.425
868.45

1) open free scan
2) click the Create System button under edit and tools menu
3) choose MOT II / P25

4) on the left tree click on the "Site 1" under the system you just made
4a) name the site KCSimulcast (you can name whatever)
4b) set the quick key to 1 (or a free key that you have open when you press this key it will enable and disable scanning for this system)
4c) set your hold time to MAX (255)
4d) IMPORTANT click control channel only

5) click the tab at the bottom for Trunk Freq.
5a)click EZ grab
5b)upper right click carriage return
5c)lower right click copy from clipboard
5d)verify that you have the 4 freq's listed in this post
5e)click import into freescan

6) go to interceptradio.com and copy what you want for example King County Police Talkgroups

23152 5a7 A King County Police North (Precinct 2) Law Dispatch
23184 5a9 A King County Police TAC-2 Law Tac
23216 5ab A King County Police Southeast (Precinct 3) Law Dispatch
23248 5ad A King County Police TAC-3 Law Tac
23280 5af A King County Police Southwest (Precinct 4) Law Dispatch
23312 5b1 A King County Police TAC-4 Law Tac
23344 5b3 A King County Police Northwest (Precinct 5) Law Dispatch
23376 5b5 A King County Police TAC-5 Law Tac
23408 5b7 A King County Police Special Operations Law Tac
23440 5b9 A King County Police TAC-6 Law Tac
23472 5bb A King County Police DATA Law Talk
23504 5bd A King County Police TAC-1 Law Tac
23536 5bf A King County Police COUNTY Law Tac
23568 5c1 A King County Police TAC-8 Law Tac
23600 5c3 A King County Police TAC-9 Law Tac
25424 635 A King County Police TAC-10 Law Tac
27088 69d A King County Police TAC-18 Law Tac
27344 6ad A King County Police TAC-30 Law Tac
30128 75b A King County Police TAC-20 Law Tac

7)click the left tree GRP TGID group 1
7a) click ezgrab
7b) copy from clipboard (lower left)
7c) if you notice it will pick up the Law Tac thing as "Name" we dont want that we want the 5th column
so you want to click the box on column 6 and ignore and column 5 you want to change to NAME

8) clean things up, set a group name KCSO for example, and set a quick key (turn on and off with function+)

program and scan....

hope that helps, if you want my programming in freescan to help let me know

_________________
If I had an antenna, I would; but I can only transmit on 160 meters.
_____
DE K7MHI

I started this reply and in the middle of writing it you got another one from SpudGunMan.
---

bcTool is a great piece of software, but it's still in the development stages and isn't without bugs. I agree with your opinion of the Uniden software.

I have found that bcTool doesn't deal with pasted data very well, so I always copy and paste everything into Excel and save it as a CSV file.

In "Motorola Type II SmartZone" SmartZone just refers to how the different sites use the frequencies they're allotted. It's still a Type II system (but select Standard instead of Splinter).

It sounds like you haven't provided the trunk frequencies, and that's why your scanner is skipping past that system.

The database here on Intercept Northwest is large. Search it here. And check out the main Intercept page with tons of great resources.

Here's a file that will hopefully get you started with bcTool if you choose to use it. Good luck, and welcome to scanning!

Thank you
I was completly ignoring this tap.
All my KC talkgroups work now.

Only question is where do I get the codes to put into the trunkgreq tab?

how do I know which frequencies go with which talkgroup?
In the Intercept NW database where none appear to be listed at all?

Thanks for every one's help.

One thing I've been pondering... Would it be better to release Freq/TG data in a tabbed spreadsheet format rather than torturing people with web-based entry & search forms ? This way people could always have data on hand, even on a laptop or PDA. Not to mention you can do a much better page layout on a spreadsheet tab when it comes to notes/comments or adding additional info like clearing codes or whatnot.

Do you mean spreadsheet a la CSV or XLS? I'd rather have something on the web that's searchable; but downloading to a spreadsheet wouldn't be a bad addition. I know it's quite easy (as I've done so) to go out of SQL into a CSV. I haven't tried an XLS though.

Yeah I was thinking CSV. In fact it used to be a spreadsheet. Here is the quick history of the Intercept database:

1981 textfile on an Apple 2
1982 custom database on an Apple 2
1983-1986: tried various things with Visicalc, Multiplan, DBase2(CPM), and DB2(MVS/ESA)
1987 Excel
2002 MySQL - Intercept web database as it is now


So for the past 6 years its been in its present format. MySQL database with a php frontend. It would be nice to see the database grow, as its running on a kickass server with a fast fiber connection. And unlike the for-profit ad-laden copycat sites that have sprung up, the goal here is to share information rather than gathering subscriber fees, ad revenue, or copyrighting & reselling the contributed data.

Perhaps its time to update things. Any ideas on changing the database format ? Search and entry screens ?

I have to say, in addition to any search functions here (which I think are very valuable) I sure do like the old text pages as well.

For example, when I went to Pierce County, and clicked "fire" there was a clean, easy to read listing of Pierce Fire freqs and info on them, etc...

I know that takes a lot of work, maybe we could split up some of the work between a few of us.

73,
Nick

I like the MySQL frontend. It was what I was trying to say in my last post, but it's too hard to type on the bus. My biggest feature request if the MySQL format is continued would be a search by freqnecy, and not just a range.

can we officially vote this thread jacked.... :D

_________________
If I had an antenna, I would; but I can only transmit on 160 meters.
_____
DE K7MHI