You'll have to be a bit more specific about your requirements. All the radios you mention here are handhelds - I had heard exactly the opposite about the 97 and milair, that it worked pretty well. However, RS scanners have a primary flaw which, at least to me, disqualifies them - they can't be set up for computer control and log/record things while you are away.
Uniden didn't have that any real milair capable handhelds until the BC250/BC296 came along. You wouldn't need the digital card that comes with it, so you could get by with that - assuming you weren't interested in the 380 mhz trunks which are showing up nationwide. Unfortunately you would need to go to the BCD396 to get milair and 380 mhz trunking, and of course that's quite expensive.
I haven't heard much about how the GRE handhelds perform on milair, so that's a question to pose in that forum. Another question to ask would be whether you can change the receive mode independent of the freq. Some handhelds default to FM in the milair bands, and that's not always what you want.
Now in base land, you do have a couple of choices. The BC785 (and 796) would have the same limitation about not being able to trunk 380 mhz as their BC250/296 cousins. The same issue exists with the BCT15. But all 3 will do milair just fine (in fact, I have seen comments that suggest that the 785, BCT15 and 796 - in that order - are in favor of milair folks). Of course, you can't go wrong with the BC780 - even though it too cannot do 380 mhz milair, it's a fine starter set, with lots of software support. All of these have software support for logging and recording. For 380 mhz trunking, you're looking at the (expensive) PSR-600 and BCD996T. I've heard little about how the PSR-500 shapes up for milair...
I don't know where 'Perry' is, however, doing some research in your state's forums might turn up whether 380 mhz trunking would be important in your area. That's definitely going to play into your decision
73 Mike
