Making Your Own .BCT Files (For Dummies)

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Admiral
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Making Your Own .BCT Files (For Dummies)

Post by Admiral »

Okay, we all see a lot of noobs joining radio forums and asking for .bct files for their new scanner that they've got from Maplin, and most get the cold shoulder, so here is how to make your own in as simple terms as I can muster, it is assumed that you have a basic knowledge of MS Excel or Libre Calc.

So, we begin, you will need bcTools, Excel or Calc and obviously a compatible scanner and data cable, I am using a Uniden UBC3500XLT.

Step 1: We need a blank, base template to build onto, open bcTools (known from here on as BCT) and click on the 'System' tab and right-click and create a new system.

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Then right-click on the new system and create a new group.

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Now is a good time to rename the System and Group names under 'System Properties' and 'Group Properties' respective tabs.

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Now under the 'Programming' dropdown tab export to .CSV and save it somewhere that you can find it.

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Now open the saved file with Excel/Calc. You will get one row of info, highlight the row and drag the row down (whilst pressing ctrl so as it's copied and doesn't increment in value), you should end up with this, note columns P and Q, I have expanded them a bit as these are our columns of interest.

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Okay, we now have our base file, time to grab a coffee.

Step 2: Find your info on the www. I have used two examples here, they are just examples so don't comment that they are years out of date, I have two separate examples because because one has all the info in one cell, and the other has it in three cells, if you find info with two cells, name and frequency then you're laughing.

Example one courtesy of Airscene.co.uk
This has the frequency in one column, but the alpha tag in two columns, so you can either ignore the third column or we can combine the 2nd and 3rd columns.

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I have pasted into a new Exel/Calc file and removed the sequential number column on the website copy as it's not needed, swapped the frequency to the right and then E2 I have input the following formula: =CONCATENATE(A2," ",B2) this combines the text of A2 and B2, highlight E2 and drag it down to cover all the entries (ctrl not needed this time as we want the cell numbers to incremate).

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Now just copy and paste the frequency and name columns into columns P and Q of the base file you made earlier and save it.

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TM1 only allows for 10 urls per post, so continued below..............................
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Admiral
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Re: Making Your Own .BCT Files (For Dummies)

Post by Admiral »

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Step 3: Importing to BCT.

As simple as it sounds, Programming/Import/From .csv file, navigate to the save file and hopefully it should look like this:

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And there is your first file ready to be uploaded to your scanner.

Step 4: Dealing with a copied file with only one column.

Example courtesy of http://www.javiation.co.uk/vu.html

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Copy and paste it into a new Excel/Calc file, highlight the one column, then goto the 'DATA' tab on the ribbon, select 'Text to Columns/Fixed Width' then slide to separate the name from the frequency. You now have your two columns to copy and paste into a base file as you did before.

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Step 5: Make another group and import this file into it, you should then have a system called 'AIR' with two groups, 'CIV/AIR' and 'MIL/AIR'.

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Congratulations, you can now export this to a .bct file:

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And here it is:
TM1-TEST.zip
I am not an expert in this stuff so if you have any questions then ask someone else.
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