I've had this scanner for quite a few months now and I have to say, I'm still very pleased with it.
There is not much I can find fault with at the moment but perhaps the only thing that niggles is the battery save feature (which can't be toggled on and off by the user) which works well, but does sometime mean that you miss the first second of a transmission which may not sound much but when an aircraft is passed a new frequency you can miss part of that frequency being read back by the pilot and so you can't be always be sure what frequency he has changed to. It's a little thing, I know, but that's it really.
I find 500 memories arranged in 10 banks of 50 more than enough and I now have my memory banks arranged as follows:
Bank 1 Swanwick & Scottish civil
Bank 2 Local airports (for me that's B'ham, East Mids & Coventry)
Bank 3 minor airfields inc. gliders, safetycom etc.
Bank 4 Swanwick military
Bank 5 Waddington & Coningsby
Bank 6 Mildenhall & Lakenheath
Bank 7 Brize Norton
Bank 8 Marham
Bank 9 RAF & USAF air to air refuelling
Bank 0 (probably tactical freqs when I get around to it)
The fact that I can upload all these frequencies along with the alpha tag names very quickly via the computer is a great bonus and something I've never done before.
My latest DIY antenna in the loft is performing very well and I can hear ATC transmissions from both East Mids and Coventry loud and clear from my Leicester location and I can also hear aircraft reading back their clearance to land at Brize Norton some 62 miles away. Aircraft at altitude can be heard 150-200 miles away so I'm happy with my set up at this time. Obviously, the very best option would be an antenna mounted on the chimney but that's not an option for me right now.
It's just worth noting too, that when listening at home I have a small USB charged speaker plugged into my scanner which really does provide an audio quality on a par with a much bigger base station radio and can transform your listening pleasure.
I'd be interested to hear from any of you also using the 125XLT and what you think of it. Personally I find it a bit simpler to use than my 3500XLT for just airband listening.
