[TheList] Uniden UBCD396XT - Squeals, clicks and pops?

Wed Jul 30 09:06:08 AEST 2014

Hi All,

I'm getting back into Scanning and Radio after ~20 years of not being.  I
got myself a little USB SDR Stick and it's pretty good, but it doesn't
make a great scanner and it's not very portable.

So I'm thinking of getting myself a Uniden UBCD396XT.  So for those of you
that have one (anyone?), I have a couple of questions:

1) Where in NZ did you get it?  I can't find a supplier in NZ, so I think
I'm going to have to go to a Aus supplier.

2) Does your suffer from the squeals, clicks and pops in the headphones
that a number of people report on the eham review site:
http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/8542

I'm hoping that was an issue with early firmware and that the AUS/NZ
version, having what appears to be all the fixes in it's (never updated!)
firmware, doesn't have this problem.

Finally - for someone living in Hawke's Bay such as myself, does anyone
know if there's any digital systems here worth listening to?  Or is a
digital capable scanner rather pointless?  The police are still analogue
here (and I know the digital version is encrypted)

I still really like the idea of the UBCD396XT because, having had a play
with Freescan already, it seems like it won't be that hard to program at
all.  And I like the idea of being able to program everything via a
computer, not having to type it all into a scanner keypad.

So any feedback UBCD396XT owners, or just HB scanner people in general
could give me, would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Tim