chgomonitor
Silent Key
Managed to find and buy a Pro-2055 yesterday, the "real" base/mobile version of the Pro-97. It's radio shack catalog number 20-248, I paid $229.99, or about $250 after Chicago taxes - ugh. Distribution is very limited in the Midwest at least, these units are still hard to find in the stores. I'd guess there's probably only about a half dozen through out the Chicago metropolitan area.
I was actually very hesitant to make the investment given the 800 Mhz rebanding issues hanging over our heads, but I'm remodelling the shack at home and needed another radio to fill it out.
I've only played with it for a few hours, but seems very good. Overall, as expected, virtually identical performance to the Pro-97.
I have three nearby FM radio broadcast transmitters and with the supplied telescoping whip they were bleeding in all over on VHF. But I have a Diamond D-130J discone mounted at 30 feet outdoors with a 3 dollar FM broadcast band trap filter in line, and with that antenna performance is very good. This "problem", which is peculiar to my location, seemed a little worse on the Pro-2055 than on the Pro-97 when using whip antennas.
Others have reported VHF sensitivity problems on the 2055, mine is way hot on VHF. In fact, for VHF aero band it's the hottest radio in the shack. If you are looking for a good radio for 118-136.975 (AM) listening, I'd highly reccomend the 2055. I can hear ground transmitters at O'Hare and in the metro region on this rig that my other radios cannot.
The only place I've found where it seems a little less sensiive is on 406-420 Mhz. Decent, but not great. I am also seeing some images of local 800Mhz transmitters on 420-440 Mhz, but they could be harmonics off the actual transmitters.
Same problems as the Pro-97 with digital hash from 800 Mhz cell sites bleeding around in the 800 band but again, mostly on 6.25 Khz offset channels, so no big deal.
UHF milair works fine. Not quite as sensitive as the Uniden BC-780xlt, but it does work fairly well. Was listening to a Wisconsin ANG KC-135 on 376.100 yesterday afternoon, and he must have been a good 100 miles or more to the north of me.
Audio is quite killer with the built-in downward firing speaker. They supply a mounting bracket which can be up or down mounted. Rear speaker jack is apparently unlimited, front earphone jack is apparently volume limited. PC/IF programming jack on the front panel, sweet. Same issue with the crummy volume and squelch knobs turning against each other.
Keypad is quite firm to press so you'll want to mount it in place one way or another or you'll be poking the radio all over the desk. Exact same display as the Pro-97 size, resolution and view-angle wise.
2055 comes with a big 13.6 VDC wall wart for external power and a mobile wiring cord, but no cigar lighter plug. Also comes with an optional DIN metal mounting case to replace the existing black metal chassis out case for in-dash mounting.
Signal stalker works great, maybe even slightly better than the Pro-97, especially with the outside antenna. I'm catching base transmitters up to a few miles away and aircraft at 12,000 feet easily. So cool.
I've only done tests on two local systems, but trunking seems to work identically to the Pro-97. (No I-calls - sucks).
One problem I've observed on both the Pro-97 & Pro-2055 is a rather slow Zeromatic function causing misses of the first second of audio when searching, especially on UHF and especially on stronger signals. Not really a big issue, but it's there.
Overall, I'd give the Pro-2055 an eight out of ten on the score, same as the Pro-97. A lot of radio for the money. I just (still) hope a 800 Mhz rebanding solution is some where in the pipeline for the future. Now, I just have to rebuild the shack, this is gonna takes days - ugh!
Happy Scanning! Ted
I was actually very hesitant to make the investment given the 800 Mhz rebanding issues hanging over our heads, but I'm remodelling the shack at home and needed another radio to fill it out.
I've only played with it for a few hours, but seems very good. Overall, as expected, virtually identical performance to the Pro-97.
I have three nearby FM radio broadcast transmitters and with the supplied telescoping whip they were bleeding in all over on VHF. But I have a Diamond D-130J discone mounted at 30 feet outdoors with a 3 dollar FM broadcast band trap filter in line, and with that antenna performance is very good. This "problem", which is peculiar to my location, seemed a little worse on the Pro-2055 than on the Pro-97 when using whip antennas.
Others have reported VHF sensitivity problems on the 2055, mine is way hot on VHF. In fact, for VHF aero band it's the hottest radio in the shack. If you are looking for a good radio for 118-136.975 (AM) listening, I'd highly reccomend the 2055. I can hear ground transmitters at O'Hare and in the metro region on this rig that my other radios cannot.
The only place I've found where it seems a little less sensiive is on 406-420 Mhz. Decent, but not great. I am also seeing some images of local 800Mhz transmitters on 420-440 Mhz, but they could be harmonics off the actual transmitters.
Same problems as the Pro-97 with digital hash from 800 Mhz cell sites bleeding around in the 800 band but again, mostly on 6.25 Khz offset channels, so no big deal.
UHF milair works fine. Not quite as sensitive as the Uniden BC-780xlt, but it does work fairly well. Was listening to a Wisconsin ANG KC-135 on 376.100 yesterday afternoon, and he must have been a good 100 miles or more to the north of me.
Audio is quite killer with the built-in downward firing speaker. They supply a mounting bracket which can be up or down mounted. Rear speaker jack is apparently unlimited, front earphone jack is apparently volume limited. PC/IF programming jack on the front panel, sweet. Same issue with the crummy volume and squelch knobs turning against each other.
Keypad is quite firm to press so you'll want to mount it in place one way or another or you'll be poking the radio all over the desk. Exact same display as the Pro-97 size, resolution and view-angle wise.
2055 comes with a big 13.6 VDC wall wart for external power and a mobile wiring cord, but no cigar lighter plug. Also comes with an optional DIN metal mounting case to replace the existing black metal chassis out case for in-dash mounting.
Signal stalker works great, maybe even slightly better than the Pro-97, especially with the outside antenna. I'm catching base transmitters up to a few miles away and aircraft at 12,000 feet easily. So cool.
I've only done tests on two local systems, but trunking seems to work identically to the Pro-97. (No I-calls - sucks).
One problem I've observed on both the Pro-97 & Pro-2055 is a rather slow Zeromatic function causing misses of the first second of audio when searching, especially on UHF and especially on stronger signals. Not really a big issue, but it's there.
Overall, I'd give the Pro-2055 an eight out of ten on the score, same as the Pro-97. A lot of radio for the money. I just (still) hope a 800 Mhz rebanding solution is some where in the pipeline for the future. Now, I just have to rebuild the shack, this is gonna takes days - ugh!
Happy Scanning! Ted
