Way back when.

[morrisr3nd]

I had purchased a GRE PSR500 back around 2012 when it was in it's prime. Well money got tight and it took it to a pawn shop about 30 miles from where I live. Being the forgetful one that have been, I didn't make the payments and lost it. Fast forward to today, I was in that same pawn shop and they still had it on display. Now mind you I have been in and out of that shop for many years there after. Even bought a few things but never saw that unit until today. While I am negotiating with the owner about a price I powered the unit up and what was on the display? My NAME. I was shocked. I told him that at some point I had owned that scanner. I showed him the name on the display and then on my DL. He looked it up in his system and there it was big as day. I apologized over and over and told him I wanted to make it right. He told me a price that was below what he gave me for it in 2014. I asked what I could do to make it right. He then gave me a price below what he had originally offered me. I bought it back. Yes he lost money and I told him I didn't think it was fair to him but he said, "It's all good". I will continue to buy things from him for that reason. But the moral of the story, I got my scanner back and it still works great. Even the rechargeable batteries. My stable is growing by leaps and bounds.

 

[spongella]

Great story!

 

[trentbob]

Yep in it's day it was a great radio, introduced in 2007 or so, rebranded as the Radio Shack pro 106 and still being sold by Whistler as the Ws 1040.

Works good on analog and was a great digital radio for the Motorola type ll smart Zone systems.

Great story!

 

[krokus]

Great scanner, overall. The weak point is simulcast.

 

[sprman1955]

I got on 12 years ago hardly ever used it.Now i use it all the time! Mainly for airband and mil air and railroads! Love it.

 

[jgorman21]

One of my faves still…

 

[ecps92]

My FEDERAL Monitoring workhorse(s) both a 500 and 600 as well as the RS Clones, caught during their Fire Sale

 

[KevinC]

The GRE-based scanners have always had much better P25 audio than any Uniden in my opinion. Same for the DMR capable ones. And their implementation of conventional DMR beats the crap out of the stupid OFT that Uniden chose.

But of course they pretty much suck on LSM and they don’t trunk track using the control channel on DMR or NXDN.

 

[RoninJoliet]

Your correct on the audio, my 197 scanners are 30% louder hearing some police and fire low speaking systems, I just wish the had P2

 

[ratboy]

If I want to hear pretty much everything, even with the bad audio, I still fire up my PSR500/106/651 the VOLUME it has on some systems alone is worth the trying to understand some transmissions. The lack of any AVC (Or so it seems) on my two SDS200's is my main complaint about them, along with being pretty deaf in general. My PSR type handhelds hear a ton more Michigan digital than the SDS200's do, even using a better antenna on them. The handhelds do better than it with even the factory duck. And in general, the volume is pretty even. MY SDS200 is sitting about 12" from my left ear, and the volume level is all over the place, from almost mumbling to BLAST(A local ambulance company is LOUD). I'm still trying to figure out a working solution to the volume level issue.

 

[Ubbe]

I'm still trying to figure out a working solution to the volume level issue.

For some reason Uniden didn't make any kind of automatic volume control in their SDS scanners, that they had in their previous scanners up to the BCD436/536. The best you can do are to try some external speaker model that has AGC/AVL/limiter built into it.

/Ubbe

 

[ratboy]

Yeah, so far, I haven't found anything that really works well. If I do, I'm willing to pay a pretty high price for it. All my cheap tries have been utter failures, or are almost a big of a hassle as not using them. Thanks for the reply.

 

[scannersnstuff]

Very nice story. Great scanner. I regret selling mine. Sensitive as heck.