RadioBanter - View Single Post

October 31st 05, 07:54 PM

In article ,
says...
On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 20:48:06 -0400, BDK
said in rec.radio.scanner:

They have gotten better though, the BC8500 was hands down the worst
scanner I ever had. It was a total disaster, and was sent back right
away. They seemed to partially learn their lesson after that train
wreck, but their low end radios are pretty bad. Worse than most of the
GRE radios I've had here over the years..

And I've owned, and repaired a large number of scanners from both
manufacturers and most of the ones I buy, or keep, tend to be GRE, for
RF performance, if not for quality control issues, like non soldered
speaker leads, antennas, loose screws, loose BNC connectors, etc...

Pro-95 vs. BC246. Pro-96 vs. BCD396. 2 signal generators. Cross-mod
tests.

Funny, in OVER THE AIR tests here right where I'm typing, the Unidens
have problems with the nearby 155MHZ Police and Ch 24 TV, and sometimes
30 too, doing all kinds of stuff they shouldn't have been doing. The 93
and 95 don't have any real problems, at least on freqs where I need to
listen to, and the 96 has just a tad of ch 24 interference. This is the
usual pattern, going back to the period where the Pro-2004 came out.
Before that, they were both really bad. The first decent base scanner
that Uniden made was the BC9000XLT, and mine has issues with the 155mhz
PD tower directly across the river causing background hash everywhere
when they key up (nearly continuously) and they can be heard clearly on
many VHF, UHF, and 800 freqs, either in the background, or clear as if
they were on the correct freq. I have repaired several 9000s, mostly BNC
connectors and display lights, and they all do it, some worse than mine,
some a little better..

The GRE radios like the Pro 43,92 (one of the few duds they've made
recently) 93/95 are always better than the Unidens in about every way,
RF wise, but sensitivity, and audio output. Not perfect by any means,
but an easy choice.

Time after time, model after model, the GRE radios (not the really old
and real cheap ones) are better performers than the Unidens. It's not
even close most of the time. The 396 I had here a few days ago wasn't
horrible at all, but it stopped scanning on a lot of channels it
shouldn't have, and it annoyed the hell out of me. Not as bad as my 3000
was, but annoying enough to probably make me get a 96, it worked well
here.

I have bought many Uniden handhelds over the years, and they just don't
stay... My Pro 43 is a senior citizen now. Not used much, but works fine
when I take out at work when there's something big going on. Another
huge strike against the Uniden handhelds, until recently, was the damn
battery pack nonsense. At least they fixed that..

BDK