OldGeaser said:
1st post. Snohomish County, Washington State Sheriff, Fire Dept, etc will be switching to 800 mhz soon. It is being tested now. I am a Fire Commissioner and have the BC 246 hand held which will receive the new 800 mhz I-Call band being used. I think the freq. is 866.0125.
I have been looking at the BC T8 for a base. I also am looking at the RS 2055. It appears that the 2055 will receive the freq. I saw in another forum something about re banding what ever that is. Question, will the 2055 receive the 800 that I need?
The on line spec says the width is 5.3 in. and length is 7.2. The photo looks like it is wider than deep. ??? Thanks
Bert
Bert, welcome to the Forums.
The 2055 is the same basic scanner (electronically) as the Pro-97. The 97 is a handheld, with the 2055 being a base/mobile version. For some recent comments as to the rebanding survivability of the 2055/97, see
this thread. At this time last summer, Radio Shack was indicating the possibilty of doing a board exchange, for a modest handling fee, on these scanners. (The Radio Shack scanners do not allow for user downloaded & installed firmware updates like the newer Unidens, including your 246.) Their more recent
comments no longer mention this, and imply their non-digital scanners (which I assume would include the 2055) would not work on the Motorola systems after rebanding. It makes no mention of any plans of how to address this issue, even if the change is to offer a conversion at the end user's expense. Murky response to say the least. Rebanding is running behind schedule, so things may change yet again. But I'd rather see something more definite from Radio Shack.
Also note that the 2055, and for that matter, no other Radio Shack scanner manufactured by GRE, will receive I-Calls. As for the measurements, I don't own one, so I can't help you there.
If this is the
Snohomish system you are trying to monitor, make sure that the groups that you want to motitor are not digital (or going to change to digital). System description for this one says "Analog & APCO-25 Common Air Interface". That means at least some of them will likely be digital. If the groups you want are going to remain analog, then your 246 will still work. But if they change over to digital, you'll need to switch scanners.
If you determine non-digital will work, then instead of the BCT-8, I'd recommend the BCT-15 instead. The
BCT-8 has only 250 channels, in five programmable banks. That means, at most, you could only program 5 trunked systems into the scanner. The
BCT-15, which has dynamic memory similar to your 246, will handle up to 2500 channels, in up to 400 systems. Also, the BCT-8 does not have text tags for the channels/talkgroups, whereas the BCT-15 does. The difference in price between the two, from online retailers, appears to be in the $40-50 range. Both of these are on Uniden's supported list for rebanding.
If you have to switch to digital, then your choice in the Uniden line is the BCD996T, or a BC796D (discontinued, but still limited availability new and used). In the Radio Shack lineup, it would be the Pro-2096, but that scanner will not do I-calls, Handhelds BCD396T, BC296D(disc), or Pro-96 (no I-calls).
