I started as a police/fire dispatcher at 18 in 1979, the day after my high school graduation, I had actually been hired two weeks prior but I had to get that diploma before I could start. I had already been a firefighter for almost a year and a cadet for 2 years before that. By then I had had a wide variety of crystal scanners, some tunable VHF receivers and of course a Minitor pager issued by my FD. I also had a Plectron receiver from my FD. My Dad had a couple Plectrons as well as he was on the Fire and Police Commission from the town we lived in and had been a police officer there years back. It helped that our next door neighbor was a Lieutenant (and later Chief) on that PD.
When I started dispatching, I was paired with a veteran dispatcher on the afternoon shift for training; Bob. He had one of those new-fangled keyboard programmable scanners, a BC210. I couldn’t afford one as I was paying for a car, college tuition, rent and girls on not much more than minimum wage but he let me borrow it from time to time.
A year or so later he tired of it and sold it to me and I was in hog heaven. 10 whole channels and no crystals; what was there not to love? I wore out that keypad! Pretty soon however I traded that in on a BC220 and then a friend offered to sell me his BC20/20. That BC-20/20 lived in my car for 3 years as it fit perfectly (more on that later).
I also had a BC250 during this time frame, and there was a group of us that sort of traded various scanners around. I may have either had the same BC250 twice or two different ones at different times, I can’t be sure. Others in the group had a variety of the same genre, like the 210XLT, and some of the JC Penny’s, Sears and Wards versions of the same radios. I seem to recall someone having a BC211 but cannot seem to remember who. I also seem to remember a BC218 scanner along the way.
These scanners all shared a common form factor. They had a sloping front panel we called “The Wedge”, with the volume and squelch on the right side, keyboard in the center and speaker on the left. The back panel had a Motorola jack for the antenna, a spade lug for the 12VDC power, a ground screw, a two-wire AC power jack and an external speaker jack. On the BC250 and perhaps a couple others there was a screw terminal on the back, I seem to recall this was to turn on and off a tape recorder via its Remote jack.
The BC210 had a battery for memory retention so it would not lose the frequencies when you unplugged it. I think the original batch used some sort of coin cell while most later radios used 9-volt batteries. The 210 would not however retain the delay or lockout status when power was removed, but with only 10 channels that was not an issue. Later the 211, 220 and others would retain the delays and lockouts, but curiously (on the 220, 20/20 and 250) not the banks one had selected.
In the early 1980’s programmable scanners were pretty much limited to the base/mobile units. Handheld scanners were pretty much restricted to crystals. I had had a few decent handheld scanners at the time, by then it was pretty much the Bearcat 4/6 (4-bands, 6-channels) for me. I had moved on from my Regency years and really didn’t deal with the RadioShack scanners too much then. I also had had some of the older RCA and Midland handheld scanners in the late 70’s but when the 4/6 and later the ThinScan came out I was converted to Bearcats.
Then along came the BC100. I got one around 1982ish. As I recall it there were a couple iterations of this. The one I had used AA-sized NiCad batteries but you needed a small Phillips screwdriver if you wanted to swap them out, they were intended to stay in the radio and be charged with a wall-wart. Mine also had a threaded antenna connection, and I paid a fortune for it. While later models had a BNC antenna connector and a better battery panel there was no way for me to spend the kind of money to replace it. That scanner was someplace around $400, probably close to $1000 in today’s money.
That BC100 was a decent enough scanner. I took it along on a cross-country Amtrak trip and it performed well, but I just didn’t like it. On the last leg of that trip I had a guy offer me $300 in cash for it on the spot, I took it and when I got home I replaced it with a Radio Shack PRO-30. That had a BNC connector and easier to replace batteries. I still kept my Bearcats in the car and at home however.
In 1984 I got hired as a police officer and now had some extra money to spend on toys. I had pared my scanners down to the PRO-30 for handheld use, a BC20/20 for the car and a BC250 at home. I still had a bunch of other scanners but these were pretty much the daily drivers. In late 1985 I bought a new 1986 Ford Bronco II, my first 4WD vehicle. This car had a pocket shelf above the glove box that I guess was intended for a place to put your sunglasses, cigarettes or some maps.
I brought the 20/20 out to my new car and was trying to figure out where to mount it along with my CB (this was the 80’s after all). I discovered that it fit this shelf perfectly after sticking it in there to get it out of my way when I was contorting myself to look under the dashboard. I was able to reach back and found that there seemed to be enough space behind the back wall of this shelf to run some wires so I decided to put the 20/20 there.
I popped in a Motorola to SO239 adapter into the antenna connector of the scanner and drew on it with a pencil to get some pencil lead on it. I then pushed the radio into the pocket shelf and that marked the spot to drill a hole for the antenna connector. I then used a hole drill just larger than a PL259 sleeve and drilled the hole. I then drilled a smaller hole where the power lug was and ran a power and ground lead thru it. I left enough tail on both the antenna and power leads to allow me to pull the radio out and connect it. The pocket was just the right size to hold the scanner in place with no hardware.
That 20/20 was such a perfect fit for me that it lived in that spot for the next 4 years. I didn’t remove it until I traded the car in and the dealer never mentioned the holes there or on the roof for the antennas.
By the late 80’s and early 90’s the old Bearcat 20/20, 250 and others of that design were pretty much obsolete. I kept the BC220 I had as it was able to filter out the standby tone for the VHF mobile phone systems in use at the time as well as the pseudo-trunking tones used by the Ontario Provincial Police on their 140 MHz. VHF network. As I travelled to Ontario often at the time for railfanning that was pretty important. I don’t think the 20/20 had that filter however so I always had the 220 with me when I went to the Great White North.
Occasionally later on I would end up with another 220, 20/20 or 250 thru a trade or an impulse purchase at a hamfest. They were always great on VHF low band but as they aged they had a variety of issues with power supplies, cold solder joints and keyboard or potentiometer issues. There was a Bearcat repair center in suburban Chicago (Franklin Park) that I could drop a radio off at and they would fix it, often on the spot, but that closed down sometime after the Uniden takeover. I knew a guy who had worked there and he retained some of the service manuals and components for a few years after that. Eventually I moved on to newer scanners, the 20/20 would not fit well in the newer vehicles and 4 years of bouncing around in a Bronco with a poor suspension took its toll. The A/B switch broke on me during a trip so I replaced it with a toggle, that worked well but looked pretty hinky. I considered replacing it with a BC250 but ended up trading in the car before I did.
As for that BC100 handheld scanner, it was pretty much the last Bearcat handheld I had until years later when I got a BC200XLT, another great performer on Low Band! I remember a trip down to the St. Louis area once with that with its stock antenna listening to LA County FD on 33.70 while driving on a steel lattice bridge across the Mississippi River. I kept that for years and had a couple spare batteries, one of those great Metro-West charger stands and a couple different cases. It finally gave up the ghost and I replaced it with a PRO43 in the mid-1990s as that would work on Military Air and I lived next to a Naval Air Station.
When I started dispatching, I was paired with a veteran dispatcher on the afternoon shift for training; Bob. He had one of those new-fangled keyboard programmable scanners, a BC210. I couldn’t afford one as I was paying for a car, college tuition, rent and girls on not much more than minimum wage but he let me borrow it from time to time.
A year or so later he tired of it and sold it to me and I was in hog heaven. 10 whole channels and no crystals; what was there not to love? I wore out that keypad! Pretty soon however I traded that in on a BC220 and then a friend offered to sell me his BC20/20. That BC-20/20 lived in my car for 3 years as it fit perfectly (more on that later).
I also had a BC250 during this time frame, and there was a group of us that sort of traded various scanners around. I may have either had the same BC250 twice or two different ones at different times, I can’t be sure. Others in the group had a variety of the same genre, like the 210XLT, and some of the JC Penny’s, Sears and Wards versions of the same radios. I seem to recall someone having a BC211 but cannot seem to remember who. I also seem to remember a BC218 scanner along the way.
These scanners all shared a common form factor. They had a sloping front panel we called “The Wedge”, with the volume and squelch on the right side, keyboard in the center and speaker on the left. The back panel had a Motorola jack for the antenna, a spade lug for the 12VDC power, a ground screw, a two-wire AC power jack and an external speaker jack. On the BC250 and perhaps a couple others there was a screw terminal on the back, I seem to recall this was to turn on and off a tape recorder via its Remote jack.
The BC210 had a battery for memory retention so it would not lose the frequencies when you unplugged it. I think the original batch used some sort of coin cell while most later radios used 9-volt batteries. The 210 would not however retain the delay or lockout status when power was removed, but with only 10 channels that was not an issue. Later the 211, 220 and others would retain the delays and lockouts, but curiously (on the 220, 20/20 and 250) not the banks one had selected.
In the early 1980’s programmable scanners were pretty much limited to the base/mobile units. Handheld scanners were pretty much restricted to crystals. I had had a few decent handheld scanners at the time, by then it was pretty much the Bearcat 4/6 (4-bands, 6-channels) for me. I had moved on from my Regency years and really didn’t deal with the RadioShack scanners too much then. I also had had some of the older RCA and Midland handheld scanners in the late 70’s but when the 4/6 and later the ThinScan came out I was converted to Bearcats.
Then along came the BC100. I got one around 1982ish. As I recall it there were a couple iterations of this. The one I had used AA-sized NiCad batteries but you needed a small Phillips screwdriver if you wanted to swap them out, they were intended to stay in the radio and be charged with a wall-wart. Mine also had a threaded antenna connection, and I paid a fortune for it. While later models had a BNC antenna connector and a better battery panel there was no way for me to spend the kind of money to replace it. That scanner was someplace around $400, probably close to $1000 in today’s money.
That BC100 was a decent enough scanner. I took it along on a cross-country Amtrak trip and it performed well, but I just didn’t like it. On the last leg of that trip I had a guy offer me $300 in cash for it on the spot, I took it and when I got home I replaced it with a Radio Shack PRO-30. That had a BNC connector and easier to replace batteries. I still kept my Bearcats in the car and at home however.
In 1984 I got hired as a police officer and now had some extra money to spend on toys. I had pared my scanners down to the PRO-30 for handheld use, a BC20/20 for the car and a BC250 at home. I still had a bunch of other scanners but these were pretty much the daily drivers. In late 1985 I bought a new 1986 Ford Bronco II, my first 4WD vehicle. This car had a pocket shelf above the glove box that I guess was intended for a place to put your sunglasses, cigarettes or some maps.
I brought the 20/20 out to my new car and was trying to figure out where to mount it along with my CB (this was the 80’s after all). I discovered that it fit this shelf perfectly after sticking it in there to get it out of my way when I was contorting myself to look under the dashboard. I was able to reach back and found that there seemed to be enough space behind the back wall of this shelf to run some wires so I decided to put the 20/20 there.
I popped in a Motorola to SO239 adapter into the antenna connector of the scanner and drew on it with a pencil to get some pencil lead on it. I then pushed the radio into the pocket shelf and that marked the spot to drill a hole for the antenna connector. I then used a hole drill just larger than a PL259 sleeve and drilled the hole. I then drilled a smaller hole where the power lug was and ran a power and ground lead thru it. I left enough tail on both the antenna and power leads to allow me to pull the radio out and connect it. The pocket was just the right size to hold the scanner in place with no hardware.
That 20/20 was such a perfect fit for me that it lived in that spot for the next 4 years. I didn’t remove it until I traded the car in and the dealer never mentioned the holes there or on the roof for the antennas.
By the late 80’s and early 90’s the old Bearcat 20/20, 250 and others of that design were pretty much obsolete. I kept the BC220 I had as it was able to filter out the standby tone for the VHF mobile phone systems in use at the time as well as the pseudo-trunking tones used by the Ontario Provincial Police on their 140 MHz. VHF network. As I travelled to Ontario often at the time for railfanning that was pretty important. I don’t think the 20/20 had that filter however so I always had the 220 with me when I went to the Great White North.
Occasionally later on I would end up with another 220, 20/20 or 250 thru a trade or an impulse purchase at a hamfest. They were always great on VHF low band but as they aged they had a variety of issues with power supplies, cold solder joints and keyboard or potentiometer issues. There was a Bearcat repair center in suburban Chicago (Franklin Park) that I could drop a radio off at and they would fix it, often on the spot, but that closed down sometime after the Uniden takeover. I knew a guy who had worked there and he retained some of the service manuals and components for a few years after that. Eventually I moved on to newer scanners, the 20/20 would not fit well in the newer vehicles and 4 years of bouncing around in a Bronco with a poor suspension took its toll. The A/B switch broke on me during a trip so I replaced it with a toggle, that worked well but looked pretty hinky. I considered replacing it with a BC250 but ended up trading in the car before I did.
As for that BC100 handheld scanner, it was pretty much the last Bearcat handheld I had until years later when I got a BC200XLT, another great performer on Low Band! I remember a trip down to the St. Louis area once with that with its stock antenna listening to LA County FD on 33.70 while driving on a steel lattice bridge across the Mississippi River. I kept that for years and had a couple spare batteries, one of those great Metro-West charger stands and a couple different cases. It finally gave up the ghost and I replaced it with a PRO43 in the mid-1990s as that would work on Military Air and I lived next to a Naval Air Station.
