Pro 43, pro 46, pro 26

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mrauditor

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I have these 3 older scanners that all function fine, but I am thinking of thinning the herd by letting my sister who listens to smaller town analog transmissions in another state have one or more of them. How would you pros rank these three scanners from top to bottom based on overall effectiveness ? I have the owner manuals and can read the specs, but actual, real life usage is sometimes different. Will someone please rank them based on either their personal experience or written reviews ?

As info, I use a PRO 106 and PRO 97 for my current needs.

Thanks.
 

kcoleman

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mrauditor,

I'm not familiar with the 26 or 46, but by many accounts the Pro-43 is highly regarded as one of the best MILCOM capable radios ever produced.
 

pathalogical

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I have the 46 and 43. The nice thing about the 46 is that it has a weather (wx) button. It will scan for the strongest weather station. It has a better backlight, but only stays on for 15 secs, whereas the 43 has no wx and a momentary backlight.
 

LesWurk

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Once owned a Pro 26, prone to images. Still have a Pro 43, notorious for a bad keyboard, mines getting there, it's also off frequency (by 5 khz) and I suspect any scanner of that vintage could use a little tune up. The Pro 43 is not the most sensitive radio around but they may help in intermod rejection.
 

SCPD

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LesWurk Just a little note if you find someone to fix your pro43, be careful, I bought 2 pro43 keypads of rr and tried to fix my 2 pro43 s.Well I screwed up something couldnt get either one to work after that, found someone who works on all types scanners, when I got them back, I was told both of the key pads were no good, he replaced one,and its ok but the other still has the same problem, if I had to do it over, no way... I could have bought a good scanner and maybe 2 prto 43 s of ebay..careful..
 

mrauditor

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This is good stuff. I plan on shipping my sister two of the three early next week and want her to be able to enjoy. She will mostly monitor local analog police, fire and ambulance, as well as weather [if available on the scanner,or she can program it in]. I will keep the remaining one as a backup for local remaining analog areas and for air frequencies.

Your input is great. Thanks for sharing.
 

slicerwizard

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100% error-free decoding from the Pro-43's headphone jack is guaranteed when feeding TRUNK88 a clean 3600 bps control channel.

I would hold on to the Pro-43.
 

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mrauditor

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I will admit to being undecided on whether to keep the 43 or the 26. The 26 does have a WX key and a frequency range of up to 1300Mhz [for whatever might be there], while the 43 continuously gets positive reviews. Both have 200 channels, triple conversion, hyperscan and cover military aircraft. The 26 uses 4 batteries while the 43 uses 6. The replies/responses/opinions have been great and I might just flip a coin and go, but any further comments are welcome.
 

KB7MIB

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Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; U; en-US) Gecko/20081217 Vision-Browser/8.1 301x200 LG VN530)

I have a Pro-43, unfortunately I bricked it years ago by accidentally turning off all the banks. I just haven't gotten around to taking it to a Radio Shack and have them ship it to the shop to get it fixed. I did that once before for some other issue.
 

mrauditor

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I realize that the world is not going to stop revolving with either decision I make, but I believe I will keep the PRO 26 and give the PRO 43 to my sister to enjoy. I chose the 26 because:

more frequency coverage capability
WX button
larger LCD for my older eyes
uses 4 batteries instead of 6

Both scanners had so much in common, it would be hard to go wrong either way.

Thanks
 

slicerwizard

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I have a Pro-43, unfortunately I bricked it years ago by accidentally turning off all the banks. I just haven't gotten around to taking it to a Radio Shack and have them ship it to the shop to get it fixed.
The Zero-Clear reset procedure fixes that.


I realize that the world is not going to stop revolving with either decision I make, but I believe I will keep the PRO 26 and give the PRO 43 to my sister to enjoy.
Oh sure, make her deal with six batteries...
 

mrauditor

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Oh sure, make her deal with six batteries...[/QUOTE]



That is funny. I needed that light moment.

Thanks.

I also have a PRO 46 that only uses 2 batteries.

I like simplicity.
 

KB7MIB

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Zero-Clear reset procedure?
 

hhrj

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100% error-free decoding from the Pro-43's headphone jack is guaranteed when feeding TRUNK88 a clean 3600 bps control channel.

I would hold on to the Pro-43.

Thanks for this tip!!!
I got Trunk88 and fired up the Pro-60...BINGO, they work together like a charm.

Ron
 
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