A little introduction is in order, I think.
It all started when I was 10. My Dad brought home a Zenith Transoceanic Radio, and I fell in love. The notion that someone could broadcast from South America or Europe and I could hear it in Ohio captured me. Forget all that technical stuff about megahertz and resonant frequencies; radio is pure magic.
Fast forward decades, and I find myself still loving radio and writing about it for PopComm, Monitoring Times, Passport to World Band Radio, and QST.
But I am still a newb when it comes to scanners. Bear that in mind when you read what follows. And, yeah, I did own scanners years ago, in the days before trunking systems, programming via computer, and alphanumeric identifier displays. Frankly, I found the scraps of intercepted audio unhelpful and even annoying.
But now, as I continue to run the Commuter Assistance Network on 2 meter ham radio in the Capital District of Upstate New York, I thought that monitoring area first responders might be a useful addition to the information provided by hams on the net.
A friend programmed my Uniden BCD396T for me. I find it to be a powerful and treacherous tool. Powerful because I can bring up each of the local counties as separate units so I can monitor only those areas I want to monitor, and treacherous because (it seems to me) it is waaaaay too easy to invoke commands that I don’t know how to turn off, necessitating resetting the entire scanner and reloading everything. So I use the BCD396T very carefully.
Lately another ham, N2SQO, has been helping with the Commuter Assistance Network. And he mentioned that he runs a separate scanner simply to monitor ham radio frequencies in the area. That seemed like a good idea to me. He also mentioned monitoring air frequencies, and that sounded like fun. So I ordered a returned Uniden BC125AT from Amazon, and that’s where these initial impressions actually begin.
The BC125AT arrived safely, and my first impression is that the fit and finish is very similar to my BCD396T.
I mounted a Diamond RH77CA to the antenna connector, popped in a couple of AA alkaline batteries, and the 125 immediately began playing the local weather radio. Hmmm, I thought, maybe the previous owner (remember this was a returned radio) had invoked a weather scan before he decided to return it. In addition, Close Call had been invoked, and it was interrupting the weather radio every two seconds.
Using the included USB cable, I connected the 125 to the Bearcat BC125AT_SS software that I had downloaded from Uniden and took a look at what had been programmed into the scanning banks. There were a bunch of frequencies, including weather frequencies, that had been programmed into Bank 1. No wonder this person had returned the radio; they had probably gotten frustrated because they were doing the same goofy stuff that I had been doing years ago with my first scanners, that is, throwing everything into one bank and hoping it works out.
While I was waiting for the 125 to arrive, I had created a file, using the Bearcat BC125AT_SS software, of the frequencies that I wanted to scan. But this time I was smarter . . . I grouped them according to category. So Bank 1 is State Police, Bank 2 is local aviation, Bank 3 is marine and an air emergency frequency, Bank 4 is national emergency frequencies, and Bank 5 is ham radio.
There was one cause for concern in the whole programming process, and that was when I clicked the “upload to scanner” command, and an alert was displayed that this “would erase everything on the scanner.” I swallowed hard and told it to proceed.
A couple of minutes later I found that it did, indeed, wipe out everything in the memory bands, but it did not erase the Service Search databanks or the weather channels stored elsewhere in the 125 . . . and that’s good news.
The operating scheme for the 125 is really simple and pretty intuitive. If you want to scan Bank 1, press SCAN and then 1 on the keypad. If you also want to scan Bank 2, press 2. In SCAN mode, you can simply turn banks on and off by pressing the corresponding number on the keypad. If you want to do a service search of pre-stored frequencies, press Func and Srch and then use the keypad to turn on or off various service searches such as Railroad, Aviation, and so forth. It’s simple, easy, and doesn’t seem to have any hidden traps. I haven’t used any other features of the BC125AT yet.
The receive performance of the BC125AT seems at least as good as the BCD396T and perhaps better on the civilian and military air bands.
Bottom line, I like it, and so far, I would recommend the BC125AT.
Note: I found the manual for the BC125AT clearly written and easy to follow. That is not the case with the manual for the BCD396T.
