Pro-50 information?

[joseph2020]

I just got 5 brand new (unwrapped, never used) PRO-50 scanners. I am planning on keeping one and selling the other 4.

Does anyone have one of these or know anything about these? Are they good radios? Reliable? Battery longevity? Anything you know that's not in the manual I would be interested in learning. Thanks in advance.

 

[nanZor]

The Pro-50 is a standard dual-conversion receiver, which means that you will be prone to "image" interference about 21.7 mhz below the tuned frequency (for this model - other models might be "up"). It is also not very sensitive, at about .5 uv.

The main thing is to NOT try to charge modern NiMH rechargeable batteries in this unit, as it was designed back in 1996 for NiCads only. Charging outside the unit with this model is a must with nimh.

Channel spacing is 5khz on the amateur bands, which is ok if your area has moved to 20khz spacing for instance in the amateur 440 band. Other scanners locked to using 12.5 or 25 khz may miss or even mistune some sites that use this 20khz spacing. But with this older model, it looks like you'd be ok.

Of course scan speed is pretty slow - we're talking low end of the line. At least it does 800 mhz.

I suppose you could put one to use for your basic conventional scanning, albeit slowly. A better antenna would be a must.

 

[GTR8000]

The PRO-50 does not cover 800 MHz. VHF Lo, VHF Hi and UHF only.

Those things are really old. As hertzian mentioned, they're dual-conversion, not triple, so they're quite prone to picking up images. That can be a particular problem with the VHF aircraft band bleeding over onto VHF public safety in areas with high air traffic.

The scan speed is incredibly slow, but then again with only 20 channels, it's not too much of an issue I suppose.

It won't support narrowbanded frequencies, so you may well pick up interference from nearby adjacent channel users. Additionally, you won't be able to program the exact frequency for many of the VHF frequencies that are now centered on 7.5 kHz stepping.

In a nutshell, if you live in the middle of nowhere and only want to listen to a few things on low band, or don't have to worry about adjacent channel users on VHF or UHF post-narrowbanding, I suppose it's an alright old school scanner to have around. I would personally never pay more then $15 or $20 for one, even if it is "brand new in the box", it's still 15 year old technology.

 

[joseph2020]

Thanks for your replies, exactly what I needed to know.

hertzian, thanks for your informative and enlightening reply. Appreciated.

Chauffeur6, Thanks for your informative reply. You answered many questions.

 

[nanZor]

Yikes, definitely no 800 mhz coverage.

And I suppose that you *might* get away with charging nimh batteries since it is only a dumb trickle charge without a timer or delta-v end of charge detector - but personally I wouldn't do it - I'd stick to an external charger.

Being circa 1995 or so, I'd definitely fire each of them up for a few hours to help reform the electrolytic capacitors if it has any.

It appears to be an older Uniden based on how the battery holder works. I still prefer that to the drop in yellow/black packs of the gre style.

What was amazing is when RS brought out their GRE-centric line of the Pro 404/PSR 100/PSR 200 a few years ago, it went backwards to 1995 with dual-conversion, when going triple-conversion was the way to go to help avoid images.

 

[pro92b]

A few bits of trivia about the PRO-50:

It was made by GRE

In the 1995 catalog it listed at $140 and in the 1996 catalog it went up to $150. By 1997 it was gone from the catalog.