[ozzy1999]

The bct8 is a good one to have for highway patrol. I have a three-scanner lineup myself. I have the bct8, the bct15 and bcd996T all running off a shared antenna, and that being the car radio antenna. Go low profile on the antennas if you can. Nothing like nosey cops riding up your rear end when you've got a bunch of antennas hanging out everywhere. Also, in some states where scanner laws are strange, like VA and NY, it could save you an unwanted encounter with the idiots. So, what can you do with three scanners? Well, if you know anything about trunking systems, you can program your rigs to be performing different scanning tasks at the same time. For instance, the bct15 can be monitoring the highway patrol frequencies and at the same time monitoring "input" frequencies for police repeaters and 800 Mhz trunking systems. What's an "input" frequency and why is it important? Well, most police radios are 35 to 50 watt radios and if you know the input frequencies these can make for nice little pinger beacons that you can detect long before you come into radar range. That means that if they are transmitting within 3 to 5 miles of your location, then you stand a good chance of picking up the transmission. That's a typical range you can expect with VHF and UHF mobile rigs. That's the same theory behind the beartracker feature of the bct8 and bct15. Both rigs are preprogrammed by state to pick up mobile extender frequencies, which is a special little mobile radio repeater that acts as an interface between the handheld radio they wear on the belt and the more powerful mobile radio inside the car. Now, you won't see many of these on local cop rigs as they don't need them because their patrol areas are typically going to be covered by an 800 Mhz system or a wide area repeater, and they can hit either system with a mobile or a handheld.

So, using a site like RadioReference.com - Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference and looking up your local systems, you can quickly get the input frequencies for all the local wide area repeaters, and if you know anything about 800 Mhz systems, then you know that the offset frequencies are 45 Mhz off the system frequencies. That means that the input frequencies to the trunk system is 45 Mhz less than each of the trunk system frequencies. So, for example, if one of the 800 Mhz system frequencies is 856.2125 Mhz, then the input frequency would be 45 Mhz less, or 811.2125 Mhz. Pretty cool heh? Now, to use such a setup effectively, you need to know how to program your rigs. That's right, rigs. You need a couple of scanners to do this effectively. That's why I have the bcd996t programmed for the wide area systems, or output frequencies, and the bct15 programmed for the input frequencies. Also, each rig has audio alerts that you can program for groups as well as frequencies. For instance, I have the bcd996t programmed to give different alerts for the type of agency using the system. So, cops (police) have one alert, sheriff and constables have another alert and highway patrols have yet another alert. The input frequencies on the bct15 also have a specific audio alert. So, by sound alone, I always know who I am listening to and if they are close by depending on which scanner alerts. Since I have the bcd996t stacked on top of the bct15, often times I can reach down and roll the control knob on the bcd996t when I get an input hit on the bct15 and pick up the dispatch to patrol communications in semi-duplex. When I hit the hold button on the bcd996t, the whole thing automatically tracts the conversations.

Now I use the bct8 because the bct15 is a little on the sensitive side and tends to go off with the highway patrol alert more frequently. The bct8 I use as a confirmation that I'm getting close the source of the mobile extender transmission. It's not perfect, but it works most of the time. Now, here is some advise from an 15 year scanner user and HAM radio operator. For the local yokals you may not be able to find all of the input frequencies as some are not published. So, what you do is this; Get yourself a frequency counter, drive around when they are running radar traps and wait until some poor fool has been pulled over for traffic stop. Get as close to stop as you can without drawing attention and turn on the frequency counter. Get a wide band counter that goes up to 3 Gigs and has a lock/hold feature. Sit back and wait. When you start getting the hit on the counter, lock it and jot it down on a note pad because that's his input frequency. Go back and program your designated scanner for input frequencies and enjoy. Anytime the idiots are nearby, you'll get the hit and know that he's close by. So, what about encryption? So what about it? It's not important that you can't hear the transmission. If you know their input frequencies and program them into your scanner it's not a big deal. In fact, since cops, dea and other notable government agencies are the only idiots out there using encryption, guess what? When you hear that encrypted AES buzz on a programmed input frequency, guess who's in the neighborhood? Duh. Yeah, encryption is a dead giveaway as far as helping you quickly identify whom you are listening to. Well, I hope this enlightens. Enjoy and Happy Hunting!! Go get'em guys!!!


Ozzy