I have been playing around with the new PSR-500 for about a day now, and here are my impressions/opinions:
General: The signal strength meter seems to be liberal, or else the radio is really a lot more sensitive on weak signals. Systems that get one or two bars on my BCD396T are showing four or five bars on the PSR-500.
Display: Characters similar to those on the PRO-97. Displays more/different information than is displayed on other GRE made scanners. Backlighting nearly as good as that of the PRO-97, much better than the PRO-96.
Conventional frequencies: No problems or issues noted, receives at least as well as
my other scanners.
Trunked systems: It seems to track analog trunked systems at least as well as, and
maybe a tad better, than my other scanners (PRO-96, PRO-97, BCD396T, BCD996T).
3600 baud trunked systems with digital talkgroups: A local system which is predominately analog, but with some digital talkgroups (Broward Co., FL, system ID 1f25); when I hold on a digital talkgroup on the PSR-500, and the same talkgroup on my BCD396T, the BCD396T decodes the signal with no issues or problems. The PSR-500 will appear and act as if it's decoding the signal, even showing the granted voice frequency, but either no audio is heard, or a garbled noise is heard, or, on occasion, some clear voice is heard. This is with a full five bars on the signal strength meter. Another 3600 baud system to the north of me, (Boca Raton, FL), seems to decode the digital talkgroups with little or no difficulties.
9600 baud P-25 systems: None in range of me to test.
"Object Scanning" And here is a big issue for me. This scanner makes use of "Objects" to program and scan. Like, a frequency is a scannable object, a talkgroup is a scannable object, etc. This means you can program a frequency or talkgroup as an object, and assign it to one or more of 20 scan lists. Which means you only need program a talkgroup or frequency one time, no need to program in the same frequency or talkgroup more than once. Great! Except for one thing: Unless I'm missing something, all the talkgroups you assign to a scan list are placed into one big basket, if you will.
On my BCD396T, I can program a trunked system, assign it a System Quick Key, and have up to ten Group Quick Keys under that system. Which allows me to have a fire/rescue group, a police group, a sheriff group, a parks department group, a streets department group, all under the same system, and I can turn the seperate groups on or off at will.
But with the PSR-500, all the talkgroups you assign to a Scan List go into one big pot under that sacanlist. There's no way to seperate the police talkgroups out from the fire/rescue talkgroups. (Again, this is unless I've missed something being this scanner is brand new to me.) This is a throwback to the old PRO-92, which was laid out in the same manner. Even the PRO-96 and PRO-97 have seperate talkgroup lists in eack bank. I suppose a workaround would be to treat each scanlist as a seperate system for whatever service you want, and with "Object Scanning" it would be easy enough, but then you're limited to 20 scan lists. Why not 50, or 60, or 99?
The jury is still out, I need more experience with this new radio, but right now, my BCD396T has nothing to worry about. :roll:
