Uniden Bearcat SR30C, 500-Channel Compact Handheld Scanner, Close Call RF Capture, Turbo Search, PC programable, NASCAR, Racing, Aviation, Marine, Railroad, and Non-Digital Police/Fire/Public Safety

Nice scanner
8.3.24 Experienced radio guy and Ham. My go to scanner died and I didn’t want to spend top dollar for a brand marketed to Hams. Arrived 7.27.24. This Uniden is quite nice. The size is perfect for me. I can put it on a table outdoors and is doesn’t blow over in a typical gust, but I am sure it would fall if the wind were strong enough. The speaker is loud; distinctly better than my two previous high-end scanners. It took me two days and a YouTube video to master the software/controls. I had it up and running about ten minutes after I began to read the instructions. The keystrokes for programming banks and scanning banks takes a little practice. It has several preset service bands that allows you to listen to a ‘search and find’ for marine/police/fire/Ham/aviation and a few others. The display is excellent. At this point, it is a buy again or buy as a gift again. Some cons — There is no VFO; you cannot just type in a freq and listen. You can get to a freq, but this is part of the practice needed to operate the scanner smoothly. It does not have military aviation UHF so you won’t hear the Thunderbirds or Blue Angels air to air (nor other routine air to air if you live near a training area or base). NOTE: As far as I know at this point, Ham repeaters have to have both freqs entered manually in a scan bank or order to hear both.

Why did I do it?
I was told by a co-worker not to get an Analog scanner since they no longer work around Richmond/Chesterfield Co in VA. Emergency and Police have gone encrypted and not digital. I was given so false info that oh yeah it should work. B.S. Uniden did send me info after I had already ordered it that it wouldn’t work after 2 comments stated that it should work even picking up Marine, Aviation broadcasts. All I heard was a picture clear signal for the local weather advisory. I pick up maybe a 20-30 second faint broadcast of some police signal then the scanner blew past it which wasn’t what I wanted it to do and I no longer heard that. I heard someone on a ham radio discussing something about North Korea and that signal was strong but it didn’t last long. It was damn difficult to try to program or place in a frequency to see if I could get anything else. It was a bunch of nonsense. I spent to much time on Amazon reading reviews good and bad and seeing what I could buy w/o a ham radio license and yada yada. After I sent it back, I went to Best Buy and purchased myself a $99 pair of Uniden walkie talkie’s for $79 since it was in the wrong place on the rack and there was no other location for where they were supposed to be. It was the last pair and they had to honor where it was placed. Haven’t opened it yet since it is a Father’s Day present to myself but it is better than racking my brain over analog, digital, encrypted nonsense.

NASCAR fan? This is all you need.
The ONLY problem you are going to have with this scanner is programming it according to the instructions in the manual, because they’re not great. However, there are a ton of YouTube videos about this unit; watch one and you’ll be like “yeah, this is super easy.” The only reason I can think of why you’d want a more upscale scanner is if your local police department uses digital radios – more and more departments go that way every year – and you want to listen to the cops. This one won’t do that; the one that will is $339.49. This radio will tune in any kind of auto racing, plus weather, aviation, marine and railroad traffic. This can be programmed from a Windows PC; as I am a Mac person that’s not an option for me, but programming it from the front panel is easy to do.This does not support Bluetooth out of the box. If you have a good pair of Bluetooth headphones, Amazon sells adapters for less than $20 that will interface your headphones to this scanner. For MOST purposes these are fine. For auto racing they are not – it is very loud at the speedway and you need isolation headphones, such as the Race Day Electronics headphones I bought from Amazon. Those are awesome. I use them for woodworking as well as going to races and they work well both places.BIG recommendation: buy Ni-MH batteries because that will save you a lot of cash. The scanner will recharge Ni-MH batteries so you don’t need a separate charger. Program it before you go to the speedway so it’s ready for you when you get there.It will cost you $47.95 to rent a scanner at a race, and it must be returned when you leave. If you buy this scanner and a set of headphones, you’ll be saving money at your third race. AND it’s yours! Also consider: they don’t rent scanners at airports or on Amtrak trains and that traffic is a lot of fun to listen to. It’s really worth it to have your own scanner.

This scanner works fine for what I want it to do. Factory rubber ducky antenna immediately upgraded to something better, but could not ask for better performance from the receiver itself. I use about a quarter of this unit’s advertised features. It is capable of doing many more things than what I have mine doing.Easy enough to program.I laugh in the face of these clowns who buy a scanner, say it doesn’t receive anything, too difficult to program, etc. Any, and every excuse. Just to let you know that I am not some 190 IQ person, just your normal, Ordinary Average Guy, who has challenges in life like anyone else, but I can program in 30 favorite frequencies, using fingers and buttons on the front of the receiver, in about 20 minutes. Probably half of that time, if I had better eyes and wasn’t holding a magnifying glass in one hand. Seriously, it is not difficult to program any consumer-level scanning radio. The limitations are as follows.1) Know what the unit is capable of. It is an analog scanning radio, does not receive digital, encrypted, or have trunk-tracking.2) Know what you want to receive. If it is in the range of frequencies advertised on the package, and if you will be near the transmitting source, then a consumer-level scanner is for you. It won’t pull in signals from hundreds of miles away by itself. You will need a better antenna (external) and a lot of height.3) Read the instructions, or ask a friend. If you won’t read the instructions, don’t buy a consumer-level unit. If reading comprehension is not strong with you, ask a friend, perhaps one with scanning experience. Consider buying from an electronics store, get a sales person to show you things that may be more difficult than turning on the unit and turning up the volume.Beyond this, if your needs match what an analog consumer-level scanning radio can offer, try your hand. Give it more than 5 minutes before you shove it all willy-nilly back in the box and return it to Amazon.

Un peu complexe a utiliser mais un belle appareil compact avec une pince a ceinture plus petite couroi non indiqué sur Amazon