Monday, September 10, 2018

Uniden UBC125XLT my scanner of choice at the moment!

Well, its been quite some time since I posted here! I must admit, I mainly tweet in real time these days regarding military aircraft movements and frequencies being used etc. However, I do want to keep this blog "alive" as there is a lot of information that is still useful and relevant going back some years for anyone quite new to the hobby of airband listening.

After having sold a Uniden 125XLT last year in preference for a Uniden BCT15X I find myself back with a 125XLT! Incidentally I also purchased a Yaesu VR120D to take on holiday with me to Devon last summer and it was an awful radio! VERY susceptible to interference and as a result, pretty deaf compared to the Unidens I'm used to and so I wouldn't recommend one of these to anyone and it was moved on to a new home pretty quickly!

The BCT15X is a great scanner (albeit in terms of sensitivity identical to the 125XLT) but with it's "dynamic memory" it was just too complicated for me as my only interest is airband.

And so, I find myself back with a 125XLT which provides great reception with very little interference or breakthrough in my location, using my DIY loft antenna which gives me excellent results.

I actually love the idea of fixed memory banks and channels numbers because I can still group things logically and memorize my most frequently used channels which means I just punch in the channel number followed by the "hold" button and I'm where I want to be very quickly! 

This coupled with its excellent features such as temporary lockout (resets when powering radio on & off again) and the priority features such as being able to designate one channel out of each bank as a priority and then using one of the priority functions such as "priority DND" (do not disturb: so it will only switch to a priority transmission IF there is no signal on the frequency you're monitoring at the time) means you have something resembling a "dual watch" feature, in fact, it means you can be monitoring up to 11 frequencies virtually simultaneously! (the one your on plus 10 priority channels).

That's it for now and if you're interested in following my real time military movements tweet then give me a follow: @Su39frogfoot