Who is Joe Bearcat?

[Mastiff2013]

Welcome, we should celebrate with a Uniden raffle. Please advise.

 

[drdeputy]

Welcome!!! It's nice to reconnect with the Mothership. "Fair winds and following seas".....guided by skill and occasionally, luck, as you mentioned.

 

[RoninJoliet]

I can vision "UPMAN" smiling in heaven, his flock is in "happymood again"....

 

[W1KNE]

Welcome Joe to the forums. Nice to see you here. As time goes on, you'll be able to filter out some of the "noise" that exists on these forums. You're going to need it, however you'll see the majority of the folks here are good people.

I've been a Uniden fan since the 246 series scanners came out. Prior to that was the Realistic (Radio Shack) and Regency scanners.
(The Regency ACT-16K! What a scanner that was!). Tried the GRE scanners at one point but very under impressed with them in so many ways. As it is right now my aresenal of scanners are 80% Uniden and 20% vintage Realistics (PRO-2004!).

 

[Bob1955]

Hi,

This is "Joe Bearcat" (JB for short if you like). First, I want to apologize for the absence of Uniden in the RadioReference.com forums. UPMan's passing hit us all hard and by surprise, and shortly after that hit the global pandemic threw everyone into various stages of isolation, so this delayed the replacement process. That difficulty remains through this day. But Uniden has never abandoned the valued customer base that exists and we have been working behind the scenes to come up with a solution to fill the void left by UPMan's sudden passing. A few issues have come up which need to be addressed and these will be addressed in the appropriate forums. These are largely cosmetic, and are being worked on. We will also have some firmware updates for current models in the coming months (give or take depending on QC approval). Nothing major is planned initially; just squashing some bugs.

I will be assuming some of the duties that UPMan had performed with respect to online forums. This includes acting as a liaison between forum users and Uniden for issues involving Uniden scanners. Such issues include bug reports and to some degree feature requests. While I can pass such requests along to Uniden, there is no guarantee any particular features will be included in current or future model scanners. Joe Bearcat is an online persona and not my real name just as UPMan was not Paul Opitz's real name. I like to keep my personal and professional lives separate. I've heard enough stories from UPMan to believe this is in my best interests.

While I have not officially worked under UPMan except under one recent project as a consultant, I did provide input to him on scanner matters/ideas, and had the pleasure to meet him in person a few times. His shoes are so big I do not believe any one person can fill them adequately, and his passing still saddens me to this say. I'm sure I'm not alone. All I can do is strive to perform the duties I will be taking on as well as he did. That said, I am human and will surely make mistakes, but I promise to try my best to fill my part of those shoes with honor.

Just to give a little bit of my background and experience, I have primarily worked in two-way radio nearly all of my professional life, and have owned and used scanners since the 70's. I have also designed a replacement control system for a Motorola radio as a hobby. That never developed into a commercial product, but it was all but ready. Maybe some day I will explain what happened. So I am familiar with radio/scanner design and control. I own several scanner brands and models, as I'm a big fan of ALL scanners. In fact, there are few brands I do not own. My focus will be on Uniden models. That does not mean I only like Uniden scanners, but I have to stay focused on the reason I'm on the forums.

I am not entirely certain at this point what forums I will be active on, but it is a foregone conclusion RadioReference.com will be a primary forum. Some of the Uniden scanner email lists (especially current models), regional scanner club email lists, and other forums are also entirely likely. This will be a work in progress.

Like UPMan, I cannot guarantee a reply to every email or message received, but I can try to read as many as I can. I will try to adhere to the excellent code of conduct established by UPMan. My email might be announced when it is finalized (addendum: It is now set up), but I may decide to leave it largely unpublished, as online forum contact benefits many who may have the same questions. There may be times when email contact is required, and that will be available.

Please bear with me as I get up to speed - to the level of service UPMan provided, as I try to review the forums for pending issues, and as I get more familiar with the duties I have assumed (including updating the TWIKI which was just a duty added tonight). Again, there are really big shoes to fill. Initially, I would like to focus on specific support issues (bugs and suspected bugs). But please let me review things before hitting me with new ones or with feature requests, or asking when the next model will be released (at this point. I do not know). There has been one model released this past year - the Uniden SR30C. We are fortunate that UPMan was able to release the SDS series before his passing, and we are aware he had a roadmap for many additional features of that series. We are still researching to see what was documented. Still, development of new models continues.

An obvious question might be if I am related to Betty Bearcat who promoted Bearcat products in the 70's. Well, we have to leave some mystery, right? (I miss her too, but not as much as Paul)

Joe Bearcat
Official Uniden Representative
Uniden Scanner Product Manager

P.S. If a forum moderator could move/pin this to the main Uniden Forum page, that would be greatly appreciated.

Joe Bearcat-Congratulations on your new position with Uniden America Corporation. Yes, you will have a lot of work ahead of you to fill Paul's shoes. Best of luck and we will await all of your software updates which are LONG overdue along with some new products we haven't seen since 2018.
Stay safe.
Bob

 

[blackbelter]

Welcome Joe,
i had the pleasure of meeting Paul several times during some of the electronic vendor shows in the Big D.
Glad to share this great forum with you as a Uniden partner.
stay safe .

 

[jonwienke]

Joe, are the NOISE and ERROR labels you refer to shown in the display? I don’t see them on my SDS200. Possibly because I don’t use the analyze function? I use RSSI and the 5 bar S meter...

Enable the detailed display mode.

 

[iMONITOR]

Hi,

This is "Joe Bearcat" (JB for short if you like). First, I want to apologize for the absence of Uniden in the RadioReference.com forums.

Joe Bearcat
Official Uniden Representative
Uniden Scanner Product Manager

Hi JB, thanks for chiming in here it is very much appreciated! No need to apologize, just don't let it happen again!

It's unfortunate Uniden didn't have the foresight to hook you up with Paul and do a Vulcan Mind-Meld to acquire all he knew!

A mind meld is a technique for sharing thoughts, experiences, memories, and knowledge with another individual, essentially a limited form of telepathy.
[source]

Vulcan (Star Trek) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Godspeed!

 

[hexagon_keyhole]

Welcome!

 

[snerd]

Welcome Joe and congrats!! My wishlist is that we don’t turn this introductory thread into a wish list for everyone and his dog!! Thanks for posting!

 

[KK4JUG]

Okay, enough of that pseudo-serious stuff. Let's get down to the important information. What's the significance of one toe missing on the avatar?

 

[dallascowboys]

Hi Joe welcome back, can not wait to see what you and everyone is up to and going to do for our scanner world.

 

[Outerdog]

A mod or admin should give JB here a "Uniden Representative" badge the same as Paul had.

 

[jake_Braker]

A mod or admin should give JB here a "Uniden Representative" badge the same as Paul had.

I assume they will in the near future.

 

[buddrousa]

Thanks for stepping up and letting us know who you are and we have not been forgotten.

 

[signal500]

Welcome JB, it is good to have you here on the forums.

 

[tumegpc]

Welcome Joe !

 

[pro106import]

There are a couple of things on my "wish list" for scanner functions that I'd enjoy seeing in the future: a signal strength meter (maybe just bar graph below the frequency display?) so we can optimize our antennas, find good hot-spots to listen from, etc. Also maybe a line-level output for recording (logging)...

Welcome Mr. Bearcat!
Yes there already is a "bar graph" on the SDS-100/200. It is called RSSI Graph in the display options. I put a couple of yellow arrows pointing at it in the photo. Cool stuff!

 

[werinshades]

Congratulations Joe, and thanks for stepping into those big shoes. After you settle in and have a chance to catch up, maybe provide a "list" of issues being looked in to so we don't repeat the issues? Debug files seemed to be a good way to diagnose and played a big role in firmware updates...hopefully that's on the agenda too.

 

[garys]

Welcome to the forum. It was a tough year all around and I'm sure Uniden had challenges in addition to Paul's untimely passing.

As W1KNE mentioned not all the house here is from RF.

I look forward to your participation here.