Best scanner for illinois scanning

[salonorg]

hey i hope iam not posting in the wrong section but what is the best scanner to use for IL scanning
mainly the apco state police channels .

i already have the trunk tracker type unidens and radio shack scanners

and i would like to upgrade to a apco scanner

is there any apco scanner i shouldnt buy due to a lack of capabilities for scanning il starcom p25 ?

what is the best one for scanning apco il state starcom p25 ?

what has the most options ? gre ? uniden ? radioshacks ?

also what about that one that takes the card upgrade to make it a apco scanner will that work ?

 

[gewecke]

Go shopping for the GRE PSR500, 600 or to ratshack for the PRO-197, 106

Any of these will do what you need!

73,
n9zas

 

[N9JIG]

Any of the current model digital scanners will work well on the local APCO P25 systems like StarCom21 as well as the Lake County EDACS system. Which one is best depends on you.

Personally I prefer the Uniden's over the GRE and Radio Shacks, but that is like saying Coke is better than Pepsi. Come to a CARMA meeting or find someone who has these scanners and spend some quality time with them before deciding on the one you want.

The GRE's tend to have better sounding audio, but most people I have spoken to seem to think the XT versions of Unidens work better with the simulcast P25 sites in the Chicago area.
The Unidens have some neat feature, like GPS control and fire tone-out.
The GRE's are a bit cheaper.
The Uniden HH scanenrs are smaller than the GRE's.

(Radio Shack digital scanners are reworked versions of the GRE's...)

You really can't go wrong with either the Uniden or GRE/RS scanners, at the end of the day they all will work pretty well.

 

[Awesomeman92]

Going with what was said, I've had good experiences with the Pro-197/PSR500. With a good antenna, works great with Starcom. If you travel, the Virtual Scanner feature the Radio Shack/GRE models have is great, you can set certain virtual scanners for certain roads/states/towns/whatever. My one complaint is if you're close to a tower that deals with anything 800mHz, you'll have to use the attenuator to be able to decode the control channel. But that's not really that big of a deal, in my opinion, it's my fault for having a good antenna on the car. It takes some getting used to, compared to an analog-only model, but it's worth the upgrade.