Best radio for Air band?

[sparklehorse]

Late to the party here, but I’ll throw in my 2¢ for posterity. I haven‘t used my scanners much since all our local law enforcement went encrypted several years ago. But a month ago I saw some posts about the new-ish Icom IC-R15 and it intrigued me. I thought I’d give it a try as an Airband scanner and see if I liked it. Well, honestly I don’t like the Icom much. At least at my location, where I have 8 high power FM broadcasters on a tower a mile from my home, the R15 kinda sucks as an Airband scanner. The leaky squelch is extremely annoying, and the sound quality is not good. It’s kind of high pitched, kind of ‘hissy’ on VHF Airband. But that might have as much to do with my RF environment as anything. I did try various FM traps and the ScannerMaster Air band-pass filter. They helped, but not nearly enough. Plus they’re awkward on a hand-held. I did however really enjoy re-engaging with aircraft monitoring, something I did quite a lot of about 50 years ago. And happily it hasn’t changed much in 50 years, at least the radio technology hasn’t. Still VHF (or UHF), still analog, still AM mode, still no encryption! So I dragged out my old DPD OmniX antenna, mounted it on our second story deck, and dragged out a bunch of my old scanners to have a little scanning fun. The big surprise for me was how good an Airband scanner the Realistic Pro-2006 is. It’s probably not quite as sensitive as my BC780XLT, but it just sounds better. Might have a bigger, better speaker, I don’t know, but it sounds great on Airband. So I can highly recommend the Pro-2006 to anyone looking for a good Airband machine. Of course, these are over 30 years old now, so getting a good one might be hit and miss. Plus mine does have the annoyingly dim backlight, which I tried to fix years ago to no avail. But it’s a great old radio none-the-less. Also my two BC780XLTs are still awesome on the VHF & UHF Airbands, probably better than any others I own, but the BCT-15X, the BC796D, BCD325p2, and even the venerable old BC250D are all right there in the running. So there’s a few good Airbanders to check out for anyone looking to get started listening to what’s happening up in the sky. I’d honestly skip the Icom R15, you could easily get two or three or even four of these great older radios for the price of one R15.
My 2¢ or maybe a nickel.
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[hill]

Have no issues with air band or mil air on the older BCT15.

My Yaesu FTM-100D works well aircraft and spent a lot time monitoring mil air.

Would think the other Yaesu radios that cover air band would do as well.

 

[xms3200]

Amazing how everyone's mileage varies, I live 5 miles LOS from a major airport, no FM transmitters nearby and the IC-R15 is the best airband radio I have owned. I had the BCT15X and find that even the Icom 705 is better on airband than the BCT15X as a desktop model, with the IC-R15 best overall.

 

[sparklehorse]

Amazing how everyone's mileage varies, I live 5 miles LOS from a major airport, no FM transmitters nearby and the IC-R15 is the best airband radio I have owned. I had the BCT15X and find that even the Icom 705 is better on airband than the BCT15X as a desktop model, with the IC-R15 best overall.

Yeah, I think your proximity to your airport is a factor with the R15. I’m closer to 10 miles from my local airport, with trees, houses, and bit of a hill in between, and so my reception of planes on the tarmac there is weak and spotty at best. Ground Control and Clearance Delivery signals are weak, even one of the approach control frequencies is MIA as far as the ground transmitter. So a lot of what I’m listening to are weak signals, and that’s where the R15 struggles. It sounds decent enough on strong signals, but it’s also struggling with some RFI within my house somewhere, which I think is what gives me the leaky squelch problem and causes me to have to run the squelch at like 7 or 8 to keep the damn thing quiet. Yeah, maybe I could track that problem down, but NONE of my other radios have that particular RFI problem so I’m just not motivated enough to try. I’ll probably sell the Icom sooner rather than later. Which is too bad, because there’s a lot of things I do like about it.
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[kc2asb]

Yeah, I think your proximity to your airport is a factor with the R15. I’m closer to 10 miles from my local airport, with trees, houses, and bit of a hill in between, and so my reception of planes on the tarmac there is weak and spotty at best. Ground Control and Clearance Delivery signals are weak, even one of the approach control frequencies is MIA as far as the ground transmitter. So a lot of what I’m listening to are weak signals, and that’s where the R15 struggles. .

To hear ground control / clearance transmitters 10 miles from the airport is very good. All things being equal, it's usually necessary to be closer than that to hear these comms. I would say your R15 is performing quite well.

 

[DudleyG]

@sparklehorse - one of the things that "us" early users of the R15 discovered is - if you are near (within 5 feet) of a LED Computer Monitor or Television set, you will get a lot of "noise" and have to turn the squelch up quite a bit. Are you using your R15 near any of these types of devices? Also, if you are near LED light bulbs, sometimes you have the same problem.

 

[xms3200]

Vert true about the IC-R15 and Rfi around the house together with LED lights. I can only use the IC-R15 is the dining room area in my house, too much static around the rest of the house.