– Uniden 800MHz mobile police scanner- Close call close call priority and close call DND – allows user to be alerted if anyone keys up within a couple of hundred feet and automatically tunes into the transmission- 6 Preprogrammed service banks – quickly search for police fire/EMS air marine weather or CB munications- 13 Preset search bands- 300 User-programmable “private” channels- Temporary lockout- Desktop or mobile operationUNBC355C The BC355C is an affordable, basic mobile scanner that’s gre
$ 114.18
A BIG Bang for your Buck….!!,
I am a long time scanner user and own and have used many different ones over the years…from early crystal 8 channel ones to some of the very latest trunking, multi-channel units. I find this compact unit an ideal second or third scanner to carry in your car as it has so many great features to assist you when you are traveling…heading the list is the Close Call option.
The “Close Call” allows you to ‘grab’ any nearby strong signals, say from a tower along the road, the drive up window at your local fast food place or to find the frequency that is being used by that police car or fire truck in the next lane. A great ‘sub-option’ with CloseCall is the DND…”Do Not Disturb” setting that you can use. Any of the so-called “Priority” type options on most scanners cause the radio to interrupt every audio transmission at frequent intervals…usually every 2 or 3 seconds. The DND comes into play when you are listening to an active channel…and the DND suspends the ‘interrupt’ until the audio is over. And I can relate that IF you have a Priority feature active, it will cause a short bit of silence at the MOST critical time of the broadcast…Murphy’s Law I guess…! So, running CloseCall with DND active gives the best of both worlds…a ‘Frequency Finding’ ability that does NOT become a huge pain at the most critical times…
The next most useful feature of this 355C is the way you can ‘link’ any combination of the scan groups. Nearly all other scanners make you choose between Police OR Fire OR CB OR Air…etc. This scanner allows you to choose to scan just a single bank..this might be your Private Bank of 100 channels of your choosing….or…any combination of Private, Police, Fire/Emerg, Air, Marine or CB. This means that when you are in open country where there are few radio transmissions, you can opt to scan every pre-programmed frequency in the radio..and that is close to 4000 channels…!!!…just listening to anything that might pop up…
While this scanner does NOT have actual TrunkTracking, I still use it to monitor our local 800 MZ trunking system by just entering the 15 frequencies that are used here, and then once a day, I lock out the one channel that is used for the Control Channel that day. I do this by use of the neat “Temp. Lock Out” button to keep the Control Channel quiet. Now it does NOT “lock onto” a TalkGroup..(I use a BCT-8 for that when needed) but most of the time the conversations will stay on the same freq. for the entire exchange, so you normally hear the complete conversation this way.
This is not a scanner that you would want if you intend on changing to a different set of freqs every day or so…it’s not difficult to put in your own 100…or 200…or all 300 favorites, but once that is done, it’s best to use this scanner as a very useful tool for listening to a LOT of channels and finding new frequencies to monitor.
And finally, this unit is very easy to use in a vehicle…it only takes the press of one button to alter the setup of the banks…so that makes it a very minimum distraction to your driving…it’s not unlike changing stations on the AM-FM radio….but a LOT more interesting..!!
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|Not sure,
This unit is very compact and easy to set up with the attached stand. You just have to stick on the antenna and plug it in. Understanding how to use the controls, and to program in frequencies was pretty easy. I didn’t think the audio quality was great, but I have nothing to compare it to, so I don’t know if that is just what you get with emergency scanners or if it could be better. We could understand some of the local police talk and local boaters calling in to port. The pre-programmed feature means that the unit is already set up to receive most frequencies you want to hear. I programmed the private band so we were only listening to our local police and fire, not all the surrounding areas as well. If you don’t want to restrict what you hear, you won’t have to program anything. We did return this unit because we decided that we would rather have a portable unit, so if something was going on, we wouldn’t have to hang around the kitchen table to follow the calls. This unit includes a suction cup stick-on antenna for use in your car, plus a mounting bracket and wires for attaching to the car’s electrical system, or you can use the auto plug in for power. It is well equipped – you get everything you need!
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|Manual Programming is Easy.,
I notice quite a few comments about buyers complaining they cannot manually program this scanner or that it requires a keypad. I thought the exact same thing. FYI – Simply hit the band button to the range of the frequency you are looking for. Once it starts scanning hit the HOLD button. Now you can use the UP and DOWN arrows to select the exact frequency. Once you locate it, simply hit the PROG buttom and a channel bank such as PRIVATE, EMS/POLICE/FIRE etc… Then hit the PROG button again. That’s it. So far I have no complaints about this scanner and I’ve have some other expensive ones. Hope this helps.
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