I have been pondering the purchase of a 996 but there is a problem i can see, someone may be able to kick in here.
Yesterday i was in a city and was using a BC-3000XLT to tune into a certain frequency, i was using the stock antenna. I was receiving the signal fairly good.
I then took the pro-96 with it's stock antenna and punched in the same frequency, i could barely decipher audibly the signal. Now i know when comparing the BC3000's DX ability vs. the Pro-96's that the BC3000 will probably do better because it was built non-triple conversion as the 96. Seems as if the ears on the 3000 are better than the 96 because of all the filtering that the newer scanners started to receive.
More on experimenting, i had a pro2067, a BC245, and the uniden base staion equivalent of the 245, i think its a 895. Seems when i was 50 miles away from this city with my current set up at home, every scanner i mentioned here did well in certain areas.
Being im on a fringe area, i need a scanner that will have the ability to track distant discretes or trunking control channels. Seemed as if the Unidens did better at this distant ability over the pro 93, and pro96. The 2067 did well at this at times, but overall, the unidens won out with this.
Now what keeps me back is that i don't want to spent 500 bones and find out the 996 or it's handheld counterpart will not have the ability to hear well. Im wondering if there is anyone out here that can shed light on this. It would have to be someone who still owns some of the older ones and has the newer ones also and do some comparison.
In a heartbeat i will buy the handheld uniden version if i could simply know it will hear better. The pro96 in my opinion is a good scanner, it will do local and do midrange distant stuff well (about 25 miles from the transmitting antenna), but the fringe areas further out from this 25 miles with or without line of sight need a little attention.
May be where somone out here knows to to exactly fine tune the 96 to where it will be more sensitive along with what some of the first generation trunking scanners will do.
Another thing that has always annoyed the hell out of me is the features of one radio vs. another. Hopefully one of the makers will produce one that has everthing.
John.