PRO-95 good choice?
 

In late May 2004 I bought a PRO-95 over the counter at Radio Shack.
It's the only scanner I've ever owned. I'm generally pleased with it,
and believe I got my money's worth.

Sensitivity is good. Indoors with the stock 6 inch antenna, in my
small Southern California desert community, there's plenty to hear. In
fact, I have to keep some banks and channels turned off or the amount
of chatter would be unbearable.

Its construction seems solid enough, though I haven't drop tested it
yet.

The slippery, small diameter knobs look cheap and feel cheap.

The keyboard is satisfactory. But I think it's almost too small, even
though my fingers are slim. I wish Radio Shack had made the scanner a
little bigger. There'd be room for a more comfortable, spread-out
keyboard and a larger speaker.

Speaking of the speaker, it puts out ample volume for hand-held
listening outdoors. The audio is annoyingly piercing with some female
voices, but I guess that's better than a muddy sound.

I briefly tried the scanner in my car, but found it too distracting
while driving. Not the scanner's fault.

Simultaneous scanning of conventional channels plus EDACS and Motorola
trunked systems works well. Once in a while there's a trunking glitch,
no big deal.

The manual is fairly thorough but poorly organized. Every description
of this scanner I've seen on the net seems to mention the lousy
manual.

In my opinion, the PRO-95's main weakness is its firmware. The user
interface gives me the impression the various functions were
programmed in haphazard fashion by different people who never talked
to each other.

For example, consider the delay setting. For a conventional
(non-trunked) channel you have a choice of either 0 or 2 seconds. I've
found this too short. If the channel goes dead for just 2 seconds, the
PRO-95 loses interest and resumes scanning. It's like watching TV when
someone with a short attention span has the remote control. Yes,
there's a way to manually hold a channel, but it's badly designed.
I'll get to that shortly.

For trunked systems there's a more flexible delay time control. You
can adjust it in .5 second increments from 0 to 4.5 seconds. Though
I'd like an even wider range, it's an improvement. So why are we stuck
with a choice of either 0 or 2 seconds on conventional channels? As I
said, it's as if different people programmed various functions of the
scanner, and there was no coordination between them.

A glaring example of that is the lack of a single button to make the
scanner stop when it comes across something you want to monitor for a
while. In SEARCH mode you press the PAUSE button. But if you're
scanning, you must press MANUAL, unless the signal is on a trunked
system, in which case you press and hold TRUNK for about one second.
If you press MANUAL by mistake, you lose the voice freq and get the
screech of the control channel instead. If you fail to press TRUNK
long enough, you store that talkgroup in memory instead of locking the
scanner on it.

Some of the button-ology gets even more archane than that. Like the
key sequence for changing a trunked bank from open to closed mode,
which I do several times a day. You use MANUAL to access a channel
(any channel) in the trunked bank, then press FUNC, then 5. Talk about
non-intuitive!

The SEARCH function is poorly implemented. Its purpose is sniff out
active frequencies you weren't aware of, right? So why does it stop on
freqs you've already loaded into channels? When SEARCH hits an active
freq, it should stop, check the channels for a match, and if one is
found, automatically move on.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Don't get me wrong; I paid full
retail and believe I got my money's worth. The PRO-95 is a good
beginner's scanner. But it could have been so much better with
well-designed firmware. My second scanner probably won't be from Radio
Shack. I'll give some other company a chance to impress me.

p.s. I have a calculator and a GPS receiver in the same price range as
the PRO-95. Both have serial cables you can connect to your computer
to upgrade the unit's firmware flash ROM. I don't know if the PRO-95
has such capability. You can definitely load it with data, however
(frequencies etc.).

--

Paul Hirose
To reply by email delete INVALID from address.

interesting information!

"Paul Hirose" wrote in message
...
In late May 2004 I bought a PRO-95 over the counter at Radio Shack.
It's the only scanner I've ever owned. I'm generally pleased with it,
and believe I got my money's worth.

Sensitivity is good. Indoors with the stock 6 inch antenna, in my
small Southern California desert community, there's plenty to hear. In
fact, I have to keep some banks and channels turned off or the amount
of chatter would be unbearable.

Its construction seems solid enough, though I haven't drop tested it
yet.

The slippery, small diameter knobs look cheap and feel cheap.

The keyboard is satisfactory. But I think it's almost too small, even
though my fingers are slim. I wish Radio Shack had made the scanner a
little bigger. There'd be room for a more comfortable, spread-out
keyboard and a larger speaker.

Speaking of the speaker, it puts out ample volume for hand-held
listening outdoors. The audio is annoyingly piercing with some female
voices, but I guess that's better than a muddy sound.

I briefly tried the scanner in my car, but found it too distracting
while driving. Not the scanner's fault.

Simultaneous scanning of conventional channels plus EDACS and Motorola
trunked systems works well. Once in a while there's a trunking glitch,
no big deal.

The manual is fairly thorough but poorly organized. Every description
of this scanner I've seen on the net seems to mention the lousy
manual.

In my opinion, the PRO-95's main weakness is its firmware. The user
interface gives me the impression the various functions were
programmed in haphazard fashion by different people who never talked
to each other.

For example, consider the delay setting. For a conventional
(non-trunked) channel you have a choice of either 0 or 2 seconds. I've
found this too short. If the channel goes dead for just 2 seconds, the
PRO-95 loses interest and resumes scanning. It's like watching TV when
someone with a short attention span has the remote control. Yes,
there's a way to manually hold a channel, but it's badly designed.
I'll get to that shortly.

For trunked systems there's a more flexible delay time control. You
can adjust it in .5 second increments from 0 to 4.5 seconds. Though
I'd like an even wider range, it's an improvement. So why are we stuck
with a choice of either 0 or 2 seconds on conventional channels? As I
said, it's as if different people programmed various functions of the
scanner, and there was no coordination between them.

A glaring example of that is the lack of a single button to make the
scanner stop when it comes across something you want to monitor for a
while. In SEARCH mode you press the PAUSE button. But if you're
scanning, you must press MANUAL, unless the signal is on a trunked
system, in which case you press and hold TRUNK for about one second.
If you press MANUAL by mistake, you lose the voice freq and get the
screech of the control channel instead. If you fail to press TRUNK
long enough, you store that talkgroup in memory instead of locking the
scanner on it.

Some of the button-ology gets even more archane than that. Like the
key sequence for changing a trunked bank from open to closed mode,
which I do several times a day. You use MANUAL to access a channel
(any channel) in the trunked bank, then press FUNC, then 5. Talk about
non-intuitive!

The SEARCH function is poorly implemented. Its purpose is sniff out
active frequencies you weren't aware of, right? So why does it stop on
freqs you've already loaded into channels? When SEARCH hits an active
freq, it should stop, check the channels for a match, and if one is
found, automatically move on.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Don't get me wrong; I paid full
retail and believe I got my money's worth. The PRO-95 is a good
beginner's scanner. But it could have been so much better with
well-designed firmware. My second scanner probably won't be from Radio
Shack. I'll give some other company a chance to impress me.

p.s. I have a calculator and a GPS receiver in the same price range as
the PRO-95. Both have serial cables you can connect to your computer
to upgrade the unit's firmware flash ROM. I don't know if the PRO-95
has such capability. You can definitely load it with data, however
(frequencies etc.).

--

Paul Hirose
To reply by email delete INVALID from address.

In article gers.com,
says...
interesting information!

"Paul Hirose" wrote in message
...
In late May 2004 I bought a PRO-95 over the counter at Radio Shack.
It's the only scanner I've ever owned. I'm generally pleased with it,
and believe I got my money's worth.

Sensitivity is good. Indoors with the stock 6 inch antenna, in my
small Southern California desert community, there's plenty to hear. In
fact, I have to keep some banks and channels turned off or the amount
of chatter would be unbearable.

Its construction seems solid enough, though I haven't drop tested it
yet.

The slippery, small diameter knobs look cheap and feel cheap.

Well, it's not built to ham radio standards, so that's expected.. It's
still better than some others out there..


The keyboard is satisfactory. But I think it's almost too small, even
though my fingers are slim. I wish Radio Shack had made the scanner a
little bigger. There'd be room for a more comfortable, spread-out
keyboard and a larger speaker.

I agree about the speaker, but since almost all my handhelds have been
the same size or smaller, I have no real complaints about it, except it
will need to be replaced in a couple of years, like all Uniden/GRE made
radios..No biggie, I can do it in about 10 minutes..


Speaking of the speaker, it puts out ample volume for hand-held
listening outdoors. The audio is annoyingly piercing with some female
voices, but I guess that's better than a muddy sound.

I have had some with much worse audio.. much worse.


I briefly tried the scanner in my car, but found it too distracting
while driving. Not the scanner's fault.

Simultaneous scanning of conventional channels plus EDACS and Motorola
trunked systems works well. Once in a while there's a trunking glitch,
no big deal.

The manual is fairly thorough but poorly organized. Every description
of this scanner I've seen on the net seems to mention the lousy
manual.

I've never seen a RS or Uniden manual that's worth anything for a newie
or someone who is buying their first trunking scanner. There is much
better info on the net. You haven't seen a bad maunual until you read
one for one of the ICOM scanners..user friendly they aint, and the
manuals are even worse..


In my opinion, the PRO-95's main weakness is its firmware. The user
interface gives me the impression the various functions were
programmed in haphazard fashion by different people who never talked
to each other.

It's MUCH better than some of the other scanners out there, in fact,
it's better than almost all of the rest. Some of them have keypress
after keypress to do the same thing it takes 1 or 2 for the 95 to do.


For example, consider the delay setting. For a conventional
(non-trunked) channel you have a choice of either 0 or 2 seconds. I've
found this too short. If the channel goes dead for just 2 seconds, the
PRO-95 loses interest and resumes scanning. It's like watching TV when
someone with a short attention span has the remote control.

Um, I've had scanners since 1971 or so, two secs is fine.. Once in a
while, someone is slow to respond, but I've had a couple of scanners
where you can set the time, and I always end up back at 2 secs..

Yes,
there's a way to manually hold a channel, but it's badly designed.
I'll get to that shortly.

Umm, pressing Manual is bad??


For trunked systems there's a more flexible delay time control. You
can adjust it in .5 second increments from 0 to 4.5 seconds. Though
I'd like an even wider range, it's an improvement. So why are we stuck
with a choice of either 0 or 2 seconds on conventional channels? As I
said, it's as if different people programmed various functions of the
scanner, and there was no coordination between them.

There probably wasn't much, but it's a non issue, IMO.


A glaring example of that is the lack of a single button to make the
scanner stop when it comes across something you want to monitor for a
while. In SEARCH mode you press the PAUSE button. But if you're
scanning, you must press MANUAL, unless the signal is on a trunked
system, in which case you press and hold TRUNK for about one second.
If you press MANUAL by mistake, you lose the voice freq and get the
screech of the control channel instead. If you fail to press TRUNK
long enough, you store that talkgroup in memory instead of locking the
scanner on it.

Well, it takes practice. Works fine, better than the Uniden setup.


Some of the button-ology gets even more archane than that. Like the
key sequence for changing a trunked bank from open to closed mode,
which I do several times a day. You use MANUAL to access a channel
(any channel) in the trunked bank, then press FUNC, then 5. Talk about
non-intuitive!

Well, you have to consider the size of the thing..The same thing applies
to any device under a certain size. My cellphone has menu after menu,
it's much harder to do almost anything on it, than it was on any scanner
I ever had..


The SEARCH function is poorly implemented. Its purpose is sniff out
active frequencies you weren't aware of, right? So why does it stop on
freqs you've already loaded into channels? When SEARCH hits an active
freq, it should stop, check the channels for a match, and if one is
found, automatically move on.

It's the same search as has been on scanners forever, you just lock out
previously heard channels. It works better than almost any other setup,
and putting the function that you want in would make it more $$$.


I could go on, but you get the idea. Don't get me wrong; I paid full
retail and believe I got my money's worth. The PRO-95 is a good
beginner's scanner. But it could have been so much better with
well-designed firmware. My second scanner probably won't be from Radio
Shack. I'll give some other company a chance to impress me.

You'll be looking for a long time, the GRE built 93 and 95 (and the
other GRE built PS scanners) are very easy to use verus about any other
scanners out there, including the Uniden made PRO 94. I'm long past a
beginner, and I have over a dozen handhelds, but the 93 (same as a 95,
just less channels) is my primary choice. Ease of use, sensitivity,
strong signal handling, all make it an easy choice to make..

Not to mention it doesn't have the Uniden battery pack nonsense..

But none of the Uniden made RS scanners do either..


p.s. I have a calculator and a GPS receiver in the same price range as
the PRO-95. Both have serial cables you can connect to your computer
to upgrade the unit's firmware flash ROM. I don't know if the PRO-95
has such capability. You can definitely load it with data, however
(frequencies etc.).

--

Paul Hirose
To reply by email delete INVALID from address.



Firmware has to be done by RS...

BDK

I can add a couple of annoyances. Frequency steps can't be changed except
in trunking mode. It always defaults to the pre-programmed frequency which
may not be exactly the freq. I need. And you can't lockout group ID
numbers in the open mode, like you can in the Pro-91, which is crucial for
searching for and finding new group numbers. It keeps locking up on the
data group ID in the open mode.

I can add a couple of annoyances. Frequency steps can't be changed except
in trunking mode. It always defaults to the pre-programmed frequency which
may not be exactly the freq. I need. And you can't lockout group ID
numbers in the open mode, like you can in the Pro-91, which is crucial for
searching for and finding new group numbers. It keeps locking up on the
data group ID in the open mode.

In article
outelectronicequipment
..com, says...
I can add a couple of annoyances. Frequency steps can't be changed except
in trunking mode. It always defaults to the pre-programmed frequency which
may not be exactly the freq. I need. And you can't lockout group ID
numbers in the open mode, like you can in the Pro-91, which is crucial for
searching for and finding new group numbers. It keeps locking up on the
data group ID in the open mode.



Yep, nothing is ever perfect. It seems like the more stuff you can
change the worse it is at actual scanning speed/ease of use though.

BDK