Thanks, Steve. Quick responses, and mainly based on this SDS-100 seemingly being a followon to the HomePatrol-2 (or is a different product to be targeted at that market?)
1) What sort of traffic on an average person's police/fire/EMS (what I'd consider to be the typical HomePatrol-2 audience) needs reception down to 25MHz? I assumed most precincts were moving to P25-style networks that the G4/G5 pick up without huge antennas. While there are certainly still some old analog systems around that are in the process of being phased out.... this was generally my interpretation of the US police/fire/EMS market.
2) Curious to see what the "other" font looks like. The HomePatrol-2 actually did a decent job here (good font selection and touch screen), although in a weird form factor (not pocketable).
3) The HomePatrol-2 didn't really have full front-panel programming either (other than "enter ZIP code" to get pre-stored settings).. I don't understand the allure to front panel programming and question the 99.999% figure, especially for HomePatrol-2 type consumers.
Maybe I'm weird but I will 100% trade off front panel programming with being able to throw the scanner in my pocket.
-Tim
1. Antenna size is dictated by frequency range, not by modulation type. A tiny antenna can be efficient for receiving 800MHz frequencies, but is absolute crap for VHF and lower bands. While 800MHz works reasonably well in densely populated urban areas where it is practical to have repeaters every few miles, it is absolutely useless in sparsely populated, mountainous wilderness areas. That's why CHP still uses low band, and is likely to continue to do so into the forseeable future. In somewhat less extreme topography, VHF still works better than 800MHz, and is very commonly used throughout the US. So tiny antennas are only useful in relatively urban settings where 800MHz transmitters are spaced fairly closely together. For many listening situations they are completely useless.
2. The design focus of the HP-2 is the user interface, not the actual receiver. The HP-2 absolutely sucks at receiving simulcast. In head-to-head tests against the 436, the HP-2 got less than 50% of traffic, while the 436 got about 95%.
3. The SDS-100 is the successor to the BCD436HP, not the HomePatrol-2. The target market is very different. The 436 is geared toward the scanner enthusiast who wants to be able to get under the hood and access every setting, while the HP-2 is geared to people who just want to turn it on and hear stuff. Front panel programming is a must for the former crowd, the latter not so much.
4. The Unications are designed to receive a fairly small number of analog channels or talkgroups on a single trunked system, using a receiver that only covers 2 bands. The 436, HP2, and the SDS-100 are all designed to monitor multiple large trunked systems with hundreds of sites and thousands of talkgroups, and have receivers that cover everything from 25-1300MHz except for a few federally mandated gaps. The additional receive bands means the receiver circuitry takes up more space, and the ability to monitor dozens of complex trunked systems requires a user interface with more options than a simple multi-position knob. So there's 2 reasons the keypad on the SDS-100 isn't going away: getting rid of it wouldn't make the SDS-100 much smaller, and the keypad is used to manage which favorite lists and list components are monitored (quick keys), enter frequencies, and other things.
