I sure like the BCD996 I bought in 2008 or so but it is
a bit pricy.

	I would think that JAWS users should be able to use some
of the programming software around but since I don't use JAWS, I
can't say for sure.

	I found a file on line that mostly described the programming
commands pretty well and I have set it up under Linux to listen
to our 800-MHZ trunking system called OKWINS which stands for
Oklahoma Interoperability Wireless Information System. Now
there's a mouth full .

	It has a mixture of lots of analog and some P25 traffic
on it and the P25 audio is sometimes almost broadcast quality
depending on what was feeding the transmitter. If it is a mobile
or hand-held system, the voices are excellent most of the time
but things can get really weird if the digital reception is poor
or there is a lot of background noise such as machinery or
sirens.

	Also, some people's voices seem to confuse the P25 CODEC
so they come out sounding like autotune pitch correction that
went very wrong.

	The Oklahoma Highway Patrol is all analog and in the
process of switching from 44 MHZ to OKWINS. Our district partly
cut over last August. Interestingly, some troopers still have
the old VHF low-band radios and not the 800-MHZ stuff in their
cars. The rest have the 800-MHZ radios and there is no cross
patch so I bet Oklahoma ran out of dough and there will be
another brief pulse of activity after July 1 until the spigot
goes dry again.

	If you get a BCD996 or the very similar portable
BCD396, the programming command sets are extremely close so what
works on one works on the other.

	I plan to tackle my programming software again using
perl instead of C and see if I can make things work better than
they do which I would call fair right now but I know I can do
better.

	One last thing about the BCD996 is that you can remotely
set the squelch and volume controlls to any value. If you move
the knobs, they instantly go back to where the knob points. You
can also remotely read where the knob is pointing or the level
that you told it to set so that's pretty nice at times.

Martin


Colin McDonald writes:
> most of the newer ones you can just enter your zip code into the thing and
> it'll program all the local systems and frequencies that the scanner can
> receive.