Bearcat 101

[trentbob]

I'll second @trentbob on both the 101, scanner stores, and news photography "back in the day"! My BC 101 was a big step up from my Regency 8 Channel VHF hi/low rock-bound scanner. PITA to mount in my Toyota Cellica of that time, but, Holly WOW--16 channels that I could change at will.

The news business was a lot different then and I'm embarrassed at what passes for "news" today.

I still have a couple of (presumably) working 101's in the garage, and a couple DOA for parts. One of my favorite features of the 101 were the red LED's and switches to lock out channels. All of my subsequent scanners, while easier to program and more feature-loaded, lack the ability to easily confine the scan to just a few channels of interest.

I was hoping to reply to one of your posts so I could say Happy New Year to you and yours Roger..

We always agree as we were both City news photogs, me on the east coast and you on the west coast during the same era, whether it be the business itself or the evolution of scanning, we went through an exciting period as programmable radios replaced old crystal sets and slide rule dial monitors.

I too have various 101s in the garage. Unfortunately none of them working at this point. Really flexible to program and to group the red LEDs with the tabs so as to only monitor a handful of things, and yes, being my first programmable it was a marvel. Worked great as a mobile with an inverter.

Difficult to get repairs if they went on the blink, difficult to get parts for, that's why I had recommended to the original poster to look for used models working or not in any marketplace possible for spare parts.

Great nostalgia and very interesting reading the posts in this thread.

 

[Firebuff880]

Wow, brings back some memories.

Had three Regency Act-R8 scanners with Boston North to Lakes Region in them. Remember the day I got I my 101 and trying to figure out how to program it.

 

[mass-man]

Wow, brings back some memories.

Had three Regency Act-R8 scanners with Boston North to Lakes Region in them. Remember the day I got I my 101 and trying to figure out how to program it.

Up..up…down…up…down…down🤣
Had a fellow photog sit in the car with me and talk me thru the freq we wanted and switch positions! Very small market but spread out…so one for the west photog and one for east side guy! Finally got a rover vehicle so had to be prudent to get the most important freq in to 16 channels! One of them still sits in my shack but pretty much dead except for NOAA weather radio!

 

[a29zuk]

Was just learning about binary numbers (they called it the "base-2 system" back then, gee remember that?) in junior high math class when my dad bought the 101.
Had to help him program it.
He gave it to my aunt when he bought the Bearcat 300.
I eventually got it back when my aunt passed away and it still works! Have some local railroad freqs in it and the NOAA weather channel.
Bought another one on e-bay for parts.

Jim

 

[ladn]

One of my first forays into BASIC programming was for the BC-101. I got tired of looking up the switch codes in the booklet, so I wrote a program in BASIC for the Commodore 64 that calculated the switch positions.

Writing it helped me learn a lot about programming, some new invectives, and that I liked radios a lot more than I liked writing programs.