Anyone remember the good ole 46/49 vl cordless very long range home phones?

Wow, hehe, Anyway I remember our doorbell rang one day back in the early to mid 80,s.

I said to myself when I opened the door and seen the man standing there, oh boy, another vacuum cleaner salesman.

Well come to find out he didn't sell vacuums but sold uniden brand, I'm pretty sure that was the make of home cordless phones he was selling.

These were the 46/49 Mhz phones with the telescoping antenna on the base and the phone itself to.

I remember my parents ended up buying one and the company the salesman worked for did their own financing as I believe the cost was right at $250 which was a lot in the early 80,s.

I was still in my teen's and was always into electronics especially scanners,cb,s etc.

Anyway my best friend that I grew up with lived just under a mile away and I remember well that I used to walk to his house almost daily.

Well I decided to see how far the new toy, the cordless phone would reach so one day I put the base unit outside setting atop an 8ft ladder. We lived way out in the country of west Palm Bach fl.

So I grabbed the phone and took off walking to my friends house, I was about 1/4 mile away from home and tried the phone and still had crystal clear dial tone so i kept on walking and while approaching my friends house which was about 3/4 of a mile away from home I tried the phone and wouldn't u know it, still got a dial tone but it was a little noisy but was there and could still make a call on it.

So I got to my friends house where it still worked and we decided to grab a ladder and get on his roof as we did.

The phone worked great w almost full quieting.

Those were the good ole days where lo band ruled.

Now u got these newer 5ghz w supposed very long range written all over the box they come in.

Lol, yea right, get 100ft away from the base and ur digital signal is gone.

I remember how much fun it was to listen to those cordless phones on the scanner!


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46/49 MHZ cordless phones

I too remember them units, my folks had one that had the big long telescoping metal whip on both the handset & base. Once my folks let me test a scanner antenna i had by copying a call on the scanner, i was able to hold a full quieting signal from the phone for a good ways, walked out of the house and into the hayfield in front of the house down to our private pond and still had a full quieting signal, now when i got into the woods around the pond things got a smidgen noisy, but for the most part still totally hearable (with just the antenna i was testing, what i`ll call a "small gain" duck antenna), still amazed me that these units could actually get out that far, i could see why folks would worry about someone else unintentionally accessing their phone line, as AFIK these units didn`t use any kind of PL/DPL squelching right? If so then you could have a bit of a problem. Still, those were some fun days when ya could hear lots of stuff on lowband, and have fun trying to figure out where it was comming from . N9NRA

I had another Uniden as well.

Jimru said:

I remember how much fun it was to listen to those cordless phones on the scanner!


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After my parents bought one of those Uniden cordless phones, I made sure to always use a corded phone. In the military, living in a densly populated area, I had a Uniden scanner and listened to many people on these phones. I had my corded Sony phone and people sometimes asked why I had not gone wireless. I just said that those phones were too expensive.

Made for some awesome entertainment listening to all the conversations.

I still have one and it works great... An ATT model that was made by Lucent Technologies. As already noted, one does need to be aware of a possible neighbor listening in. I'll answer the call (working outside) and take the conversation to a corded phone for more privacy, if necessary.

I had an AT&T 5400 with 10 channel "auto-select" that was kind of cool in that it had an ASFIC that would scan the 10 channels and if it heard activity on a channel, it would automatically select a clear one. You could also change the channel manually by pressing a key on the handset. The caller would hear a little bit of the FSK data being sent to the base during that change.

The phone had GREAT sounding compandered audio both in and out. It also had incredible range. I remember walking two streets over, and I lived in a hilly terrain area, and could still make and receive calls.

Of course, reality struck me in the summer of 1992 when some creepy ham drove up and down my street and intentionally intercepted my call just because he thought I was "talking about him behind his back". I went out and bought one of the first V-Tech 900MHz spread spectrum phones which had a pretty good reach, and like any good radio system should be, was fully spread spectrum with (albeit primitive by comparison to today's AES-256) ENCRYPTION.

Put the brakes on that!

PACNWDude said:

After my parents bought one of those Uniden cordless phones, I made sure to always use a corded phone. In the military, living in a densly populated area, I had a Uniden scanner and listened to many people on these phones. I had my corded Sony phone and people sometimes asked why I had not gone wireless. I just said that those phones were too expensive.

Made for some awesome entertainment listening to all the conversations.

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True, given that those old cordless phones sent everything in the clear i could see why you`d not want to give up the corded one . Anyway, being that we lived out in the sticks back then we really didn`t hafta worry about someone hearing our calls, all them trees really did a good job of attenuating the signal, as i found out during my experiment. Still, it was kinda nice not to have to always be tied to the corded phone leash, but if ya live in a urban area where anyone could (and likely did) listen to any calls you made or got i could see the reasons for not cutting that cord (untill they figured out spread-spectrum phones and put an end to 49MHZ phones and hearing `em on a scanner ), but while it was around it was kinda fun to see how far one of them units could get out (and for me how far i could copy `em!). N9NRA

Just wondering, is anyone still using those old 49MHZ cordless phones yet? After i read all the post again i got me to wonderin`. Ya know, i just might have a go at scanning that segment (49MHZ)) while i`m on the way to Dayton this year just to see if i`ll still hear one of them units , the second train i take goes through Indianna, which is for the most part flat farmland with some trees tossed in to make it intresting and less boring. If anyone is using one i might actually hear `em for a goodly ways, might be fun to do me a bit of scanning on the ride this year . N9NRA

Probably the most you'll hear is a lot of buzzing, since the ECPA act of 1986 made it illegal to intercept cordless phone calls. Then manufacterers started marketing digital units currently being used. But good luck! :wink: 73, n9zas

gewecke said:

Probably the most you'll hear is a lot of buzzing, since the ECPA act of 1986 made it illegal to intercept cordless phone calls. Then manufacterers started marketing digital units currently being used. But good luck! :wink: 73, n9zas

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Yeah, okay. In that case i likely won`t even bother . Thanx anyway for the info, but hey, couldn`t ya just see someone out there somewhere still using one of then phones? Might not be secure, but if ya are looking for something with some REALLY LONG RANGE then 49MHZ cordless is the way to go (only thing more reliable would be cellullar). Thingy is, my folks had theirs for a long time before Dad got a newer one and they made the old one go away, but when ya think on it, that was state of the art for cordless back then (kinda like them old 49MHZ walkie-talkies we used to use back when i was in elementary school to play an early version of what as a ham i know as fox hunting . N9NRA

Oh yeah. That was the first cordless phone my wife and I had! I was great and until we realized that my scanner could pick it up. WE had to make sure we used the corded phone for "secure" communications. Given our neighborhood there were many hours spent listening to some pretty lively and colorful conversations from the neighbors.

Had one of those back in the '90s. Can't recall the brand. My then-wife (who wasn't blonde but perhaps should have been) one day was talking to a relative and walked out of the house, got in her car, and headed off to the store with the handset. Only when the connection dropped out did she realize that, duh, this one doesn't work away from home the way her then-new, state-of-the-art giant cellular flip phone did! But she said she got almost 3/4 of a mile before losing the signal...not bad considering she was in a partial Faraday cage!

I did have the frequencies in a scanner back then, mainly so I'd hear the phone in my shop (steel siding and roof, no windows), where it wouldn't ring and would barely work at all, when I was the only one around. Never heard anybody else on them, but then living out in the boonies that's no surprise. I recall that ours was a great phone with good audio and good range.

I don't even have a landline phone anymore...

A bit off topic but we later purchased a Sanyo 900mhz spread spectrum cordless phone. It was by far the best we ever had. As a test, I took the handset outside and walked about 1/4 mile down the street and reception was still great. Our house has foil backed insulation so RF activity has always been a challenge. Not with that phone though.

N9NRA said:

Just wondering, is anyone still using those old 49MHZ cordless phones yet? After i read all the post again i got me to wonderin`. Ya know, i just might have a go at scanning that segment (49MHZ)) while i`m on the way to Dayton this year just to see if i`ll still hear one of them units , the second train i take goes through Indianna, which is for the most part flat farmland with some trees tossed in to make it intresting and less boring. If anyone is using one i might actually hear `em for a goodly ways, might be fun to do me a bit of scanning on the ride this year . N9NRA

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Let us know what you hear!

gewecke said:

Probably the most you'll hear is a lot of buzzing, since the ECPA act of 1986 made it illegal to intercept cordless phone calls. Then manufacterers started marketing digital units currently being used. But good luck! :wink: 73, n9zas

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If someone is using one of those older phones nearby the train, he would hear it for sure, but the likelihood of someone using a twenty year old cordless is slim.

Still hear some baby monitors on 49 mhz. Course you also hear all over the house, if talking is loud or screaming. You have not cleaned your room yet, that sort of yelling

Still Have One

I have one in my basement. I can walk a couple hundred feet away from my house and still have great signal. My other cordless phone has troubles getting to the receiver in the basement (Big House) but that phone will work anywhere in my house!

I remember instances of people who would drive around with one of these phones until they heard a dial tone and then make long distance and pay calls on the poor unsuspecting line owners phone who would get stuck with the bill.

Also there were lamps that had baby monitors built into them. Even after the baby has grown up and the lamp still works it continues to broadcast audio on those 49 MHz. frequency.

W8RMH said:

I remember instances of people who would drive around with one of these phones until they heard a dial tone and then make long distance and pay calls on the poor unsuspecting line owners phone who would get stuck with the bill.

Also there were lamps that had baby monitors built into them. Even after the baby has grown up and the lamp still works it continues to broadcast audio on those 49 MHz. frequency.

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Wow bet that was intresting, if ya were able to do that now and ya did, it`s a goodly bet it might not end well. And as to them baby monitors, i used to scan for them with my old Radio Shack PRO-2003 with a center-loaded gain whip on the unit, i could hear them things from a few blocks away at my sister`s place (residential area with kinda big open ares in between houses), AFIK those units didn`t put out much juce, but with the right antenna on your reciever you could get decent recieve on one even more than three blocks out from your location. N9NRA

WOW GUYS!!
I'm so surprised that this thread got so many views and better yet replies!!

It's so kewl to see folks here who are on the same wave link

Believe it or not, I was at a huge flea market in north Carolina 5 years ago and on a couple of tables there, one guy was selling those old 80,s uniden phone cordless phone systems.
They were not in their original boxes but were all (around 20) of them were in what looked like factory sealed very tight plastic wrap.

Stickers on all of them said factory refurbished w new battery.

But there is no telling how long ago that was done so the batteries were prolly shot in them just from age if they really sat that long in which they probably did in a warehouse somewhere? ???

The price was $25 each and they were all identical and in brand new,mint condition.


Anyway,yea from the post above
IM GUILTY, AS YES I DROVE AROUND and had phone stuck to my ear awaiting a dial tone a I lived in we so fl and my gf lived in Boca raton, that was long distance which was expensive back then, prolly $20-30 cents a minute so i would use that line for a few minutes and hang up and two minutes later get on another lol, heck I was just 17-18 I believe.
Oh the memories hehe.

Next thing I did around just ten yrs ago was I installed two wireless security cams and thought what I did w the cell phones and said, hey I can put my little tv and plug it in my cig lighter and hook up the video cam receiver and go wireless cam hunting.

I hadn't even got a mile away from home and picked up, crystal clear a hair salon wireless cam which was inside.

Then drove approximately 5 miles and got several cams, all the others where home,yard,front door cams.

But it was fun for sure, not for any reasons other than to see if it could be done in which yes, sure can.

Again guys thanks for your stories and replies and sharing them