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Beartracker BCT-12
I've been reading posts at various newsgroups for the past couple weeks. I've heard some good things about the BCT-12 scanner. Most people say it's a great addition to a good radar detector. It has a HWY PATROL alert that is triggered off HP radio freqs for any state...pre-programmed.
They are the size of a RD and portable. But Uniden doesn't make 'em anymore. The only place I've seen 'em is Ebay. I bought one. I'll try it out for a week or so and post back.
Re: Beartracker BCT-12
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MakeTrack=trueOriginally Posted by RadarWarrior
One on sale at Ebay.com
Thanks for the link. I bought one a couple weeks ago.
I believe the BCT8 has the highway patrol function, and it's a current model. About $150 from uniden.
The BCT-8 should be much better functionally, especially for the states where the freqs have changed. Problem is, it isn't detector-sized like the BCT-12, it is a full-sized scanner radio. Try clipping a BCT-8 to your visor!
It would be nice if Uniden came out with a newer detector-sized model. Maybe one that is re-programmable via computer so it is never obsolete...
Jim
just google image searched a bct12, never even seen that. Sure would be nice to see that with the updated frequencies of the bct 8. I could easily see one of those on my dash in the near future if they do. Also interresting that there is a signal strength guage on the BCT12 but not on the BCT8. Kind of a crappy idea to drop something that useful on a newer version.
Hmm, this sounds like a challenge....
Well I drove around today with it. Mostly around town and out on the highway. I'm very inexperienced with scanners so I don't know what to expect.
The thing acted like it locked onto a channel and never went back to scanning. I set it to STATE: OK and MODE: HP (hwy patrol). The book says when it is scanning the display will show OK (state your scanning). When it picks up a transmission the display will change to HP and you'll hear audio.
However, when I powered it up, counted 1 thru 9 on the display....beeped..showed OK...then went to HP. Ocassionally it would jump to OK but then back to HP. I heard two HP communications all day. The rest of the time there was some sort of strange audio...not squelch static. If you turn the squelch up then the scanner would emit the standard shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....static. If you turn the squech down then the audio would change to a different sound. This sound had a rhythm to it...much like a diesel engine at idle.
If anyone has any experience with these small BearTrackers please post.
Once I did get a beep from the extender freq alert. About 5 minutes later I saw an HP turn down a county road. Dunno if that observation was correlative.
Ignition interference?
Yes, this is how it should work...
When it is scanning, it might stop on a carrier that isn't a police transmission. You need to hit the L/O "Lock Out" button to lock the channel out and continue scanning, otherwise it will stay on that channel.
Since it sounded like a "diesel engine at idle" and sounds like it was constant, is likely an 800 MHz control channel for trunked radio. You'll definitely want to lock that out or else it will always stop there. However, many systems change their control channel daily, so each day you'll probably want to clear your locked out channels and start over.
On any given day, when you start up the unit, it will likely stop on multiple channels that are just noise etc so you'll have to lock out multiple channels to get a good scan going, but once you do you probably won't have to mess with it too much. Basically, hit the L/O button until it says OK all of the time, unless you are picking up the police.
Jim
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