Im new to the hobby and im looking for some advice on a decent model to purchase to put in my car or use in home. possibly a unit i could take out and use in home at times/ use in car when driving. I live in Orange, Ma in franklin county just outside of worscester and hampshire.
I would like to add that i am looking to scan local and state pd, fire, and ems. Weather and air traffic would be nice to but not necessary.
The Uniden BCT15x has caught my eye and i want to know what others think of that specific scanner for my needs?
At the very least, you'd want a scanner that can do all available non-digital trunking, which the BCT15X would do fine. It won't receive digital P25, but there's so little of it in use in MA that this might not be an issue.
Honestly, I don't know anything about the BCT15X. While it seems like a very full-featured scanner, one thing that would put me off is the fact that the speaker is on the bottom. This might create an issue if you don't have it mounted in your car and let is "sit" on a seat. And while it has a lot of great features, you should ask yourself whether you are going to need 9,000 frequencies and the GPS functionality. Are there that many things to monitor out there in western MA? Do you intend to drive such a long distance that the GPS functionality will be worthwhile for you? Also, if want to use this in your car you'll have to run it through your car's power supply and you'd have to get a remote head to mount it properly, whereas a handheld like the BC346XT or the PSR300 or Pro 164 can run on batteries and be completely mobile.
I might recommend you go to Scannermaster.com and read their reviews on all of these models. They've got detailed specs and (to me it seems) pretty unbiased comparisons between nearly equivalent GRE and Uniden models.
Jeff
It also depends
