Radio Preference For military

[darkwolf]

What is everyone's preference for military monitoring?

[OHIOSCAN]

Short of buying expensive ICOM's or AOR receivers if you can find good cond Uniden 785,789's there some of the last good milcom scanners. The PSR-500 is great for trunking but absolutely terrible at VHF/UHF air, the same applies to the Uniden 996. I have the 500 & dumped the 996. It does depend on what and where you want to monitor. A great antenna and feedline can make or break your setup,
get your antenna as high as possible. The Discone is the old standby, I use the DPD antennas and can recommend them. Your 2006 is actually one of the best scanners for milair, I still use mine with
the Opti 456 board, My ICOM 8500 is great but there tough to buy unless you import or get a used one.
Your radio's listed are all capable so I would look at a dedicated milair antenna to start out.

Mike

[darkwolf]

Which dpd antennas do you have ?

[OHIOSCAN]

The OMNI-X

[mancow]

BC780XLT is my favorite for Military Air. Syntor X9000 is the best I've ever found for low-band.

[WAScanMan]

I use a BCT15X for lowband, VHF/UHF milair and a Pro-106 for the 380MHz digital trunked systems and the 145MHz digital CAP freqs. Both are hooked up to the same antenna (discone) via an amplified splitter.

[737mech]

Originally Posted by WAScanMan

I use a BCT15X for lowband, VHF/UHF milair and a Pro-106 for the 380MHz digital trunked systems and the 145MHz digital CAP freqs. Both are hooked up to the same antenna (discone) via an amplified splitter.

Can you give me an idea what you can get on those digital cap freqs? How far can you hear them? I don't have any nac cap stuff here in NV.

[TedRHayes]

I use several different radios, but I've found the BC125AT to be a very good low cost scanner for MILAIR VHF/UHF. It has shown excellent sensitivity, and scans pretty fast.

[WAScanMan]

Originally Posted by 737mech

Can you give me an idea what you can get on those digital cap freqs? How far can you hear them? I don't have any nac cap stuff here in NV.

Ours are mixed mode, mostly analog with occational P25. Usually the same radio traffic on both modes. Check ins, location reports, radio tests etc. As for how far; being that the transmissions are coming from the same source, P25 really cuts down the reception range when going from P25 to analog or vice versa. Even the net control sometimes says "Can you repeat? You went digital." Here's a recording I took if you wanna have a listen: https://soundcloud.com/wascanman/wacapp25

[darkwolf]

I would like to thank everyone's posts it's much appreciated

[trap5858]

Over the years I have used many radios or scanners to monitor military assets.

The one that I have used for the longest is the Regency MX 5000.It was the first kind of general coverage scanner to hit the market in the early 80's. Rather limited by todays standards- 20 channels and slow scan rate, no alpha tags but overall a sensitive receiver. It was marketed with a Regency label on it but made by AOR. It is still in service today.

Others I have used have been Yaesu VR 500. ICOM R-20, AOR AR-8200mkIII and of course some of the newer handhelds like the PRO-106, Uniden 396XT

[gtaman]

Use a uniden BCT15 picks up mil air and air really well. Also use a RadioShack mag mount with the middle whip taken off for air reception works great.