[FedCom] Uniden Bearcat BC996T and Federal Monitoring

[J&D Schnoor]

The 996 is an improvement over the 796 in that a P25 signal that is 
encrypted will display ENC and not be heard at the speaker.  I haven't tried 
an analog DES signal yet, but I think the best solution there is to program 
the analog PL tone and then the analog DES traffic won't be heard.  And, 
yes, I have used the PL/DPL feature as much as possible.  Sometimes I scan 
groups oif channels where I have a number of frequencies programmed as 
digital only so I should only hear them if they are un-encrypted P25 and 
then I have that same group again as analog only with PL/DPL search feature 
on.  I know that this has been discussed quite a bit in the past, but the 
PL/DPL search feature is almost instntaneous.  This is a vast improvement 
over the BC796 in that it was quick on DPL, but pretty slow on analog PL 
tone.  If I recall correctly the PRO-96/2096 was almost instant PL or DPL 
search BUT you had to select which one first.  Also, the Butel ARC996Pro 
software is a winner.  I bought it based on my great experiences with the 
BC796 and the ARC250 in the past.