Commercial Grade Scanner Radio--Design/Features?

[2wayfreq]

Hi Guys,
I was thinking. Since programming commercial trunking radios for personal listening are obviously a No No, what would you like to have as far as features and construction of such a scanner radio?

Current deficiencies? Oh lemme see:

1. No slide on, rechargeable battery pack/drop in charger. We have to use rechargable AA batteries that just SUCK. These no matter how high the M/A per hour, seem to run low after a few hours.

2. Crappy receive. Motorolas/GE seem to out-perform scanners every time.

3. Poor Audio. Most commercial radios are LOUD and CLEAR. I.E--SABER and Jedi series M Radios rock.

4. Flimsy cheap plastic. M radios and others are made of Polycarbonate, Lexan, Cast Metal or other materials that hold up to wear and tear well. Many of these have THICK plastic or METAL belt clips that dont snap off like radio shack clips. That heppened on my pro-92, I brushed up against a person on a bus and "SNAP" my scanner fell to the floor. I ended up putting steel clip on my Pro-96 when I bought that to be safe.

5. Toy knobs, buttons-- Low grade knobs that are not ergonomic or easy to turn.

6. Water resistance--My pro-96 has no rubber plugs or gaskets on the casing and the ear jack is WIDE OPEN. So, if I go out in the rain, its going to get in there. I would have to put electrical tape on the holes. True also for a dusty environment. When I took my AOR-1000 scanner to the gulf in 1990, I had to tape every opening and fissure to make sure no dust penetrated in there. The keypad still had a few problems afterwards.

These are ideas that have probably been hashed over before, but i'm curious as to what you guys would like to see in such a radio.

Would I pay the extra money for for a weather-rugged, full-featured scanner with awsome audio and a high capacity battery? You Bet!!

I'm dreaming ofcourse, right?

[Rayjk110]

I would hope that one of the manufactures gets their act together with a scanner.

I have not used Uniden's at all, or even really held one for that matter, so I can't say anything on their part.

But RadioShack scanners do have a flimsy feel.

Then again, scanners aren't designed or built to be used in "Critical Operations" or rough "Street" use. I guess they'd figure that if you needed a radio in one of those situations, you ought to be using a real radio, and not just listening to a scanner. It would, however, be nice to see something that could stand up to some 'use'.

[fogster]

Some features I'd like to see in a 'pro' scanner:

- Good P25 voice quality. What comes out my Pro96 speaker sounds signifcantly worse than what comes out the local PD's XTS3K speakers.

- A 'solid' feel (you sort of touched on this). My Saber feels very solid; people have long discussed the fact that you could clobber someone with it and kill them. The Pro96, by comparison, feels hollow. I'm not suggesting you fill it with cement to compensate, but I like the feel of something nice and solid.

- Digital ID decode: since it's a scanner, it should be able to decode various forms of PTT-ID.

- Frequency counter: Why hasn't anyone thought of this? My little Yaesu VX-2R (ham rig) has a cheap attempt at one, but as far as I know, it's the only radio in the world with that feature. Why does no scanner have this feature?

- A PL/DCS code detector. (Bonus if it decodes DTMF/LTR data, like some stand-alone boxes do.) Double bonus points for detecting QC/Plectron type codes, and being able to use any of these as a squelch rule.

- Dual receive, with recorder: I can't tell you how many times I've been listening to an active call, and had police and fire key up at the same time, both saying something really important. (It'd also be handy with the above QC2 decode: let it automatically record whenever fire tones out, so when the trucks go by, I can play it back and see where they're going.)

It'd be more of a toy than an important feature, but the last two cell phones I've owned have had nice, high-res color screens. Very few radios do... It shouldn't be too hard to find good uses for a big screen, and it could probably be designed so it didn't suck down too much power. (And why no USB interface?)

I absolutely second knobs. Not until I bought a Saber did I realize what I'd been missing all these years.The Pro96 works fine under normal situations, but it's not that hard to imagine someone trying to adjust volume wearing gloves or whatnot.

Of course, being cheap is good, too... But I think the scanner we've just 'designed' would have a four-digit price tag.

[2wayfreq]

The AOR line of scanners seem well constructed/features. But NO LTR/Type II/EDACS TRUNKING? Wierd! They must not have rights/licensing to add that in yet. Anyone know?
I would like to see MDC ID decoding,NAC Decoding,ASTRO Unit ID/Soft ID decoding as well. Close-Call was an excellent move from Uniden. I'm getting a 396T, i'm tired of radio shaft.
I do think there is a need for a rugged,"in th field" multi-system digital scanner that professional radio techs, hams, and LEO agencies could use to monitor other agencies and services. Something that isn't gonna run out of juice in 3 or 4 hours and is LOUD, rugged and flash upgradeable/module replaceable. Ofcourse, Easy to program and loaded with powerful features.

Heres kind of a stretch, but perhaps an insertable module that was AES/DES-XL/OFB key/keyload compatable so that "Authorized" agencies could monitor encrypted traffic if needed. Yeah I know, no way in hell. Big M wouldn't go for it anyway.

[bellersley]

The Uniden "Close Call" takes care of the frequency counter issue.

You have to look at it from the point of view from Uniden. The market for a ruggedized scanner isn't aparantly there. However, I think they would find that if they offered a high quality product (I'm thinking along the lines of a Front Display Jedi here), people would be attracted to it. I know it would be popular umong the Media, who mostly use Motorola because you can beat them up and they'll come back asking for more.

It would probably cost quite a bit of money though. But, when you consider in my area if you want to keep an ear on everything, you would need a VHF P25 Smartnet radio, a UHF Conventional, 800MHz Smartnet and an 800MHz EDACS radio, that's a heck of a lot of radio. To replace all that with one radio that you know is of equal quality that does everything, I'd certainly be willing to shell out a lot of the green stuff.

[RESCUE161]

The 396 has a freq counter on it. It's just a "hidden" item.

I say, get rid of all of the unwanted bands and make a public safety only scanner.

I can't for the life of me understand why someone would want to listen to CB or ham on a scanner.

136-174 MHz

380-512 MHz

700/800/900 MHz

Certainly they could get the sensitivity way up if they cut out all of the other crap.

NAC codes NAC codes NAC codes - need I say more?

This reminds me of the short story Mexicalli Soup.