Home Patrol
I have the Home Patrol and I love it for mobile use, particularly leaving the local area. Performance-wise I am completely impressed with the sensitivity and general selectivity of the radio.The touch screen is very nice and very readable which I think is a plus for safety while driving. It is much easier to see and read than any other radio I own, be it scanner, ham, or commercial. I use mine with the GPS receiver and it automatically scans the local area as I move across the state from county to county with no input from me. It just sits there and plays whatever services I have told it to. A nice feature is the ability to add or delete services if you get bored driving. Driving near a railroad track and feel like listening in on the train traffic? No problem, just a very few taps on the touch screen and you're there. How about aircraft? No problem, tap the screen a couple times. Oh, isn't that a prison? - just make a few taps and you're there.
For some, it is all the scanner they will ever need. For me, it is not my only scanner - nor would I want it to be - but I must confess, for day-to-day scanning, it is really darn convenient. There, I said it. Now I'll have to turn in my radio-geek card for admitting I sometimes prefer convenience.
As everyone else has correctly pointed out, it is totally dependent on the RR database - which has vastly improved by the way. The problem is that if an agency of interest to you is not being heard on your scanner, you really have no way to figure out why, or experiment, if you will. If you are part of an active radio community, the kindness and expertise of others can and often will help you out as we have seen here countless times - but if you are the only scan-head out in the sticks you may have a problem sorting things out.
There are other scanners better suited to experimentation, ferreting out hidden and obscure traffic or doing what we used to call somewhat tongue-in-cheek "radio research" in the military.
You'll find some amount of negative press on the Home Patrol. I myself had heartburn in the beginning but my troubles were database issues not radio issues - it just took me a while and using other radios to figure that out. I am of the opinion that some of the negative press is unwarranted. There was even someone regularly posting and trashing the radio before he ever got it from the shipper and laid eyes or hands on it!
You'll find that there are some in the radio hobbies to whom actually "listening" to the radio is of secondary importance to having a lot of bells and whistles, knobs and switches and looking "good" or bragging about the price tag while doing it!!!! To each - his own.
If you have any specific questions about the radio please feel free to ask away on here or via PM. I also have other radios by Uniden and GRE.
