Quote:
Originally Posted by ac9f
I am looking for "pro" and "con" comments on the ICOM IC PCR2500 unit. Thinking about buying one and using with a laptop computer to be somewhat mobile. If you have one, I would appreciate your comments. Yes, I have read the comments on EHAM and checked the wiki page information on the unit.
'73
chuck
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Just got mine (Canadian unblocked version - Yes they exist !) 2 weeks ago and havent had a lot of time to play with it, I'm in a learning curve with this beast. It's a incredible double receiver ... November and December issues of Popular Communications magazine had great articles about it and the third and last part will be in the January issue. Grab these if you can.
Scrool half way down the page and you can read the November highlight of the article here :
http://www.popular-communications.co...0Nov%2008.html
Scrool half way down the page and you can read the December highlight of the article here :
http://www.popular-communications.co...s%20Dec08.html
If you're looking to go mobile the IC-R2500 version is a solution that will not have you bring a PC in the car if you don't have to. It's not has flexible but it's fine for listening only or scanning pre-pgm frequencies.
I bought the P25 decoder and it works great where I am.
Although, IT WILL NOT DO TRUNKTRACKING, you can monitor control channels (or any voice channel) easily with special software (Trunk PCR or Unitrunker to name these). Unless some third party software bring something new in trunktracking for this receiver you'll need the Uniden's BCD396T, BCD996T and the GRE's of this world for that.
The "diversity" antenna gives you "virtual gain" but in a residential use it's not an issue unless you have two external antenna on different area of your roof that would give you different coverage (which I don't have and let others make milleage on this).
Can't tell you more for now, the holiday vacations will allow me to use it a little more and I'm sure I will discover a lot of things and features that I'm not aware of for now !
If you can afford it and depending on you're needs it a great receiver.
A last note just to clarifing for someone reading this post and not familiar with the product, it's not a "Scanner replacement", it is a "Communication receiver" and a good one.