In most of my recent Scanner Tales I have discussed older scanners and events from the distant past (like the 1970’s thru 2000). Here is a more recent one. I hope you enjoy it!
For the last 15 years or so I have been a beta tester for Uniden’s scanner products. I first met the late, great Paul Opitz when he appeared at the Dayton Hamvention some 15 or 20 years ago. I was working the Scanner Master booth with Rich Barnett and Gommert Buijsen (of Butel) in the old Hara Auditorium in Trotwood OH. Paul spent the day on Friday in the booth and Lindsay Blanton (owner of RadioReference) was in our booth on Saturday. That Friday night we all had dinner at a local restaurant along with another friend of mine, Mike, a programmer that wrote software for many Alinco radios.
Mike and I pretty much kept our mouths shut during dinner and enjoyed the discussion of the scanner business we were a small part of being held by probably the 3 of the most influential industry titans. It was certainly a great experience!
During that dinner and the day in the booth I got to know Paul pretty well and I bounced some ideas off him. One was using a memory card to hold multiple program archives and allow easy swapping of memory contents. A year or two later GRE would introduce a similar feature called V-Scanner but without the removable memory, there were 20 internal sets of memories that one could load at will. A couple years later Uniden announced the revolutionary HomePatrol (later rebranded as the HomePatrol I after the HP2 came out a few years later). While I have no illusions of my memory card suggestion having anything to do with the SD-Card based HomePatrol I like to dream that I came up with it.
Paul sent me an email before the HP-1 came out and asked if I wanted to join the beta team. I had already tested the old BC245XLT a few years before and was able to debunk the "Agency-Fleet-Subfleet" (AFS) theory of EDACS systems during that time. It turned out that it worked on the system the developers of EDACS tracking monitored but not all EDACS systems followed that protocol. The programming system persists to this day however as some people like it better than the decimal version. Now that most EDACS systems are gone it really doesn't matter much.
Since then, I had beta tested many other Uniden scanners and the one I am most proud of was the SDS100. At the time (Late 2017 and early 2018) I was retired from the police department but working for Scanner Master doing phone sales and support as well as writing articles. My partner there was Jonathan Higgins (of "The Scanner Guys" fame), who was full-time with Scanner Master at the time. He too was a Uniden Beta tester and had been for quite a while. He and I talked on the phone almost hourly during the workday and we were both heavily involved in the then-secret testing phase of the SDS100. While there were several other beta team members gathered by Paul for the SDS100 we were the only ones that actively worked for a scanner retailer.
At the time we were instructed to keep our status as testers quiet. Uniden and Paul wanted to keep the speculation down so we could iron out the bugs and make sure the radio worked as desired. Both Jonathan and I had P25 simulcast systems in the areas we lived in so we were able to put the SDS100 thru its paces. With the work of Paul and all the members of his beta team several issues were able to be identified and rectified before it was introduced to the public. We each had an early pre-production radio, later replaced by a newer version. I don’t recall if there was a third pre-production version but there might have been. Regardless soon after we got the final pre-production scanners delivered to us the story leaked. There had been rumors but no one really had the full story except the beta team.
Universal Radio of Ohio inadvertently added it to their webpage ahead of time and the cat was out of the bag. While the team members were still asked to remain anonymous and not discuss things, Uniden and Paul tried to minimize the furor. It was a tall order!
At the time Jonathan and I would make regular and ad hoc livestreamed videos about all kinds of scanner topics under the name of “The Scanner Guys”, then on Facebook, before it was switched over to YouTube. One of us might pop up on an impromptu livestream while out railfanning, watching planes at an airport or doing some other activity involving scanners. We had a regular weekly show as well. Occasionally the SDS100 would inadvertently be in the background but as far as I know no one caught on to it from us.
Well, it started to come around to springtime in 2018. Jonathan and I were making plans for going to the Dayton Hamvention, now at the Greene County Fairgrounds in Xenia OH. We asked Paul if we could display the radios there and make videos as part of “The Scanner Guys” channel. He agreed and set up a couple ground rules but pretty much let us do what we wanted. He figured that since the word was already out there we could generate some excitement about it.
The plan Jonathan and I came up with was that I was to fly from Phoenix to Boston, he would pick me up at the airport there and we would then drive to Dayton with the booth materials and Scanner Master products that we would be selling. Along the way we would stop at Horseshoe Curve for some railfanning as it was one of the favorite spots for both of us. Along the way we would do livestreams with the SDS100 demonstrating its operations and capabilities. It would be the first public showing of the radio and we were stoked!
Of course, all good plans get disrupted, this plan was altered by a thunderstorm. As my plane was about to land at Boston’s Logan Airport we suddenly went around, I think there was a windshear warning or something. As this flight was coming from Las Vegas (where my Phoenix flight connected) we probably did not have enough fuel left to hang around and wait for better weather at Boston, so we got diverted to Albany, NY. I pulled up some maps on the way and figured if I could get Jonathan on the phone as soon as we land, he could be at Albany in a couple hours, and we could still make our planned stop at Horseshoe Curve along the way. Albany was probably the best place for us to divert to under these circumstances.
We landed at Albany a short time later and I called Jonathan from the plane. We agreed that he would meet me at the airport there and we would continue with our plan. All I had was my carry-on, so I just left the flight there. At first however he was not convinced I was actually in Albany as I have been known to tell tall tales from time to time. Once I convinced him I really was in Albany he hit the road and beat feet for Albany. Meanwhile I found some food and a place to sit and nap until he arrived.
When he did arrive (in record time by the way!) we hit the road and headed towards Altoona and Horseshoe Curve. We stopped at a motel along the way and started out again very early in the morning. During that drive both days we did several livestreams with the SDS100, including using the GPS feature. We even did one from Horseshoe Curve itself. We then drove the rest of the way to Springfield OH, where our hotel was for Hamvention, just down the road in Xenia. We did stop at Vito’s Pizza in Cresson, right alongside the tracks. This is probably the best pizza east of Chicago! I know I exceeded my data allowance from Verizon that month, I think Jonathan had an unlimited plan at the time. It cost me an extra $40 on my cellular bill but it was worth it.
That night (Wednesday) we did an extended livestream from the hotel in Springfield. We then went to the fairgrounds Thursday morning to set up the booth and did a few more streams. While we were there, we had a bunch of other venders come up and ask to see the SDS100’s. We had the only two available for public display at the time, and it would be several more months before they would be available to the public.
On Friday we had hundreds of Hamvention goers crowding the booth all day long wanting to see the SDS100. We had 2 there, mine and Jonathan’s and we had to keep a keen eye on them, so they did not walk away. We also had to keep the battery charged. These still had the smaller battery, and it only lasted a few hours on a charge so we found some USB extensions so we would keep them plugged in while they were being pawed at. The same occurred Saturday and Sunday. I bought a box of alcohol wipes to try to keep them as clean as possible. We even had Whistler Wendy and her compatriots from the Whistler booth come over to see us and the radios!
On Saturday Jonathan did a presentation in one of the meeting halls about the SDS100, the place was packed. Several times during the three days we were offered some pretty hefty sums if we wanted to part with the SDS100’s. While some of the offers were very tempting, we could not do so of course. By this time Paul was fighting his final battles with cancer but still very much involved in the work and could not attend Hamvention. He passed away a year and a half later. His last scanner project was the SDS200, which came out about a year after the SDS100, but I am sure he had several other projects going on right up to the end.
All in all, we had thousands of people view the SDS100’s at Hamvention and many more thousands watching our livestreams. Over the next couple of years while I was still working with Jonathan on “The Scanner Guys” before I retired from that a year or so ago the SDS100 and SDS200 shows that we did always drew the largest audiences.
On the trip back to Boston we did several more livestreams about the SDS100 and the Dayton Hamvention. I think we did a couple more the next couple of days from the Scanner Master offices or Jonathan’s house. Eventually I had to head back home to Phoenix, but it was a great trip for sure!
The next year (2019) at Hamvention was a bit anticlimactic compared to 2018. We had the SDS200’s available for sale along with the SDS100’s and they sold out fast. The next two years Hamvention was cancelled due to Covid19, but I did go to the 2022 show. Again, the SDS’s sold really well, as expected.
The SDS100 and SDS200 continue to be the premier scanner available, even more than 5 years after being introduced. The videos, livestreams and display of the radios by Jonathan and myself certainly helped introduce them but it was the combined efforts of Paul Opitz, Uniden’s engineers and the entire beta team that made them possible and as good as they turned out to be. I am happy to have had a small part in it.
For the last 15 years or so I have been a beta tester for Uniden’s scanner products. I first met the late, great Paul Opitz when he appeared at the Dayton Hamvention some 15 or 20 years ago. I was working the Scanner Master booth with Rich Barnett and Gommert Buijsen (of Butel) in the old Hara Auditorium in Trotwood OH. Paul spent the day on Friday in the booth and Lindsay Blanton (owner of RadioReference) was in our booth on Saturday. That Friday night we all had dinner at a local restaurant along with another friend of mine, Mike, a programmer that wrote software for many Alinco radios.
Mike and I pretty much kept our mouths shut during dinner and enjoyed the discussion of the scanner business we were a small part of being held by probably the 3 of the most influential industry titans. It was certainly a great experience!
During that dinner and the day in the booth I got to know Paul pretty well and I bounced some ideas off him. One was using a memory card to hold multiple program archives and allow easy swapping of memory contents. A year or two later GRE would introduce a similar feature called V-Scanner but without the removable memory, there were 20 internal sets of memories that one could load at will. A couple years later Uniden announced the revolutionary HomePatrol (later rebranded as the HomePatrol I after the HP2 came out a few years later). While I have no illusions of my memory card suggestion having anything to do with the SD-Card based HomePatrol I like to dream that I came up with it.
Paul sent me an email before the HP-1 came out and asked if I wanted to join the beta team. I had already tested the old BC245XLT a few years before and was able to debunk the "Agency-Fleet-Subfleet" (AFS) theory of EDACS systems during that time. It turned out that it worked on the system the developers of EDACS tracking monitored but not all EDACS systems followed that protocol. The programming system persists to this day however as some people like it better than the decimal version. Now that most EDACS systems are gone it really doesn't matter much.
Since then, I had beta tested many other Uniden scanners and the one I am most proud of was the SDS100. At the time (Late 2017 and early 2018) I was retired from the police department but working for Scanner Master doing phone sales and support as well as writing articles. My partner there was Jonathan Higgins (of "The Scanner Guys" fame), who was full-time with Scanner Master at the time. He too was a Uniden Beta tester and had been for quite a while. He and I talked on the phone almost hourly during the workday and we were both heavily involved in the then-secret testing phase of the SDS100. While there were several other beta team members gathered by Paul for the SDS100 we were the only ones that actively worked for a scanner retailer.
At the time we were instructed to keep our status as testers quiet. Uniden and Paul wanted to keep the speculation down so we could iron out the bugs and make sure the radio worked as desired. Both Jonathan and I had P25 simulcast systems in the areas we lived in so we were able to put the SDS100 thru its paces. With the work of Paul and all the members of his beta team several issues were able to be identified and rectified before it was introduced to the public. We each had an early pre-production radio, later replaced by a newer version. I don’t recall if there was a third pre-production version but there might have been. Regardless soon after we got the final pre-production scanners delivered to us the story leaked. There had been rumors but no one really had the full story except the beta team.
Universal Radio of Ohio inadvertently added it to their webpage ahead of time and the cat was out of the bag. While the team members were still asked to remain anonymous and not discuss things, Uniden and Paul tried to minimize the furor. It was a tall order!
At the time Jonathan and I would make regular and ad hoc livestreamed videos about all kinds of scanner topics under the name of “The Scanner Guys”, then on Facebook, before it was switched over to YouTube. One of us might pop up on an impromptu livestream while out railfanning, watching planes at an airport or doing some other activity involving scanners. We had a regular weekly show as well. Occasionally the SDS100 would inadvertently be in the background but as far as I know no one caught on to it from us.
Well, it started to come around to springtime in 2018. Jonathan and I were making plans for going to the Dayton Hamvention, now at the Greene County Fairgrounds in Xenia OH. We asked Paul if we could display the radios there and make videos as part of “The Scanner Guys” channel. He agreed and set up a couple ground rules but pretty much let us do what we wanted. He figured that since the word was already out there we could generate some excitement about it.
The plan Jonathan and I came up with was that I was to fly from Phoenix to Boston, he would pick me up at the airport there and we would then drive to Dayton with the booth materials and Scanner Master products that we would be selling. Along the way we would stop at Horseshoe Curve for some railfanning as it was one of the favorite spots for both of us. Along the way we would do livestreams with the SDS100 demonstrating its operations and capabilities. It would be the first public showing of the radio and we were stoked!
Of course, all good plans get disrupted, this plan was altered by a thunderstorm. As my plane was about to land at Boston’s Logan Airport we suddenly went around, I think there was a windshear warning or something. As this flight was coming from Las Vegas (where my Phoenix flight connected) we probably did not have enough fuel left to hang around and wait for better weather at Boston, so we got diverted to Albany, NY. I pulled up some maps on the way and figured if I could get Jonathan on the phone as soon as we land, he could be at Albany in a couple hours, and we could still make our planned stop at Horseshoe Curve along the way. Albany was probably the best place for us to divert to under these circumstances.
We landed at Albany a short time later and I called Jonathan from the plane. We agreed that he would meet me at the airport there and we would continue with our plan. All I had was my carry-on, so I just left the flight there. At first however he was not convinced I was actually in Albany as I have been known to tell tall tales from time to time. Once I convinced him I really was in Albany he hit the road and beat feet for Albany. Meanwhile I found some food and a place to sit and nap until he arrived.
When he did arrive (in record time by the way!) we hit the road and headed towards Altoona and Horseshoe Curve. We stopped at a motel along the way and started out again very early in the morning. During that drive both days we did several livestreams with the SDS100, including using the GPS feature. We even did one from Horseshoe Curve itself. We then drove the rest of the way to Springfield OH, where our hotel was for Hamvention, just down the road in Xenia. We did stop at Vito’s Pizza in Cresson, right alongside the tracks. This is probably the best pizza east of Chicago! I know I exceeded my data allowance from Verizon that month, I think Jonathan had an unlimited plan at the time. It cost me an extra $40 on my cellular bill but it was worth it.
That night (Wednesday) we did an extended livestream from the hotel in Springfield. We then went to the fairgrounds Thursday morning to set up the booth and did a few more streams. While we were there, we had a bunch of other venders come up and ask to see the SDS100’s. We had the only two available for public display at the time, and it would be several more months before they would be available to the public.
On Friday we had hundreds of Hamvention goers crowding the booth all day long wanting to see the SDS100. We had 2 there, mine and Jonathan’s and we had to keep a keen eye on them, so they did not walk away. We also had to keep the battery charged. These still had the smaller battery, and it only lasted a few hours on a charge so we found some USB extensions so we would keep them plugged in while they were being pawed at. The same occurred Saturday and Sunday. I bought a box of alcohol wipes to try to keep them as clean as possible. We even had Whistler Wendy and her compatriots from the Whistler booth come over to see us and the radios!
On Saturday Jonathan did a presentation in one of the meeting halls about the SDS100, the place was packed. Several times during the three days we were offered some pretty hefty sums if we wanted to part with the SDS100’s. While some of the offers were very tempting, we could not do so of course. By this time Paul was fighting his final battles with cancer but still very much involved in the work and could not attend Hamvention. He passed away a year and a half later. His last scanner project was the SDS200, which came out about a year after the SDS100, but I am sure he had several other projects going on right up to the end.
All in all, we had thousands of people view the SDS100’s at Hamvention and many more thousands watching our livestreams. Over the next couple of years while I was still working with Jonathan on “The Scanner Guys” before I retired from that a year or so ago the SDS100 and SDS200 shows that we did always drew the largest audiences.
On the trip back to Boston we did several more livestreams about the SDS100 and the Dayton Hamvention. I think we did a couple more the next couple of days from the Scanner Master offices or Jonathan’s house. Eventually I had to head back home to Phoenix, but it was a great trip for sure!
The next year (2019) at Hamvention was a bit anticlimactic compared to 2018. We had the SDS200’s available for sale along with the SDS100’s and they sold out fast. The next two years Hamvention was cancelled due to Covid19, but I did go to the 2022 show. Again, the SDS’s sold really well, as expected.
The SDS100 and SDS200 continue to be the premier scanner available, even more than 5 years after being introduced. The videos, livestreams and display of the radios by Jonathan and myself certainly helped introduce them but it was the combined efforts of Paul Opitz, Uniden’s engineers and the entire beta team that made them possible and as good as they turned out to be. I am happy to have had a small part in it.
