bct15x as milair scanner

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scannersnstuff

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what are some thought's on the bct15x as a milair scanner. also for the vhf aero. range ?. thank you all in advance.
 

737mech

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Bct15x

what are some thought's on the bct15x as a milair scanner. also for the vhf aero. range ?. thank you all in advance.

It's a great scanner for Military Air and VHF AIr. Range would depend on antenna setup. I can hear aircraft well over 100 miles away. I have a DPD 118-1000 Log Periodic fed to my scanners with LMR400 coax. It's on the roof pointed north to the Nellis AFB ranges. This week there was a crash near Alamo, NV. I could hear the wingman circling the crash. Easy 100 miles away loud and clear. Your results may vary depending on mountains and terrain. I like the 15x over the 15 because of memory size and the few differences they added. You can find opinions all over this website about which one is better, I also have a GRE PSR500. I can say for digital systems it's great too but the Uniden 15x does better on Mil air for me.
 

tomhvt

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I've used my BCT-15X for Mil and Commercial air for a couple of years now. Also use it monitoring railroads. Works fine on voice comms.

When attempting to use it for ACARS data from aircraft, my impression is that it does not have sufficient audio bandwidth for this. I have another scanner that works pretty well on ACARS, and there is a difference when you open up the squelch and hear the ambient noise. The BCT-15X does not seem to have the highs, and so I think it misses the synch signal that briefly appears at the start of these ACARS messages.

Also, I have noticed the BCT-15X is much more sensitive to my HF receiver's oscillators than my other two scanners. It will open squelch much more often, making it more difficult to use on the AM air bands, though this does depend on the specific HF freq to which I am listening.
 
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