Uniden Bearcat BC65XLT Portable Scanner
This is an older model scanner that was sold at Radio Shack and likely other outlets probably in the late 80’s into the 90’s. It has Wx, scan and manual buttons, 10 channel memory and a key pad with Lockout capablities (and keypad off/on switch.) It can run on 12V DC (tip positive). It doesn’t get Air/Milair frequencies and does not do trunking. The stock “rubber duck” antenna seems to do ok. (I don’t have anything else to compare with but a standalone weather radio.) Wx reception on this is quite good with the stock antenna, a replacement antenna may perform better though. It uses a BNC connector.
It takes 5 batteries. They can be either alkaline or rechargable. It’s designed to recharge nicads, so if you have nimh rechargables you’ll need to set the switch in the battery compartment to alkaline so it doesn’t try to charge them. (Of course, you should be aware of that switch when you first put batteries into it and make sure to set it as appropriate.)
The keypad off/on switch basically keeps you from entering frequencies (and replacing a preset) as well as preventing you from changing to the wx receive mode. The wx button scans for available broadcasts in the weather band. You can be in scan mode (scanning through the 10 presets) or in manual mode (listening on a single channel.) There are volume and squelch controls as well as an earphone plug (mono).
Entering frequencies is as simple as … 1) power on, 2) make sure keypad is on, 3) use the “Man” button to go to the channel you want to set. Once the channel # displays enter your frequency… ie. 146.325 and then “E” for enter. If the display shows an E, you have likely entered a frequency outside the range of this scanner. If you just see the channell # again, you might want to press the “review” button to have it repeat back to you the frequency recorded. (This can be handy to log what you have entered for each channel.)
To lock out a channel from the scanning, press the L/O button (with the keypad on) while you are on that channel. The preset’s can be remembered through a short battery swap operation, but if unpowered for several weeks it will forget. As the battery weakens you will hear a chirp every few seconds. Also, I’ve noticed gravelly distortion from the internal speaker when the battery is weak and the volume is too high. If the volume is cut down the distortion goes away for a bit (as the battery drains though the usable volume drops.)
This is not a trunking scanner, not brand new, doesn’t cover the 800 frequencies or air/milair or even tv audio, but it’s a fairly solid unit and useful for weather radio and local analog non-trunked scanning. (NO S.A.M.E.)
(On the unit I’ve borrowed - I changed the batteries twice before I realized that it took a total of 5 batteries… I had swapped out the 3 that were exposed on opening the battery door and it still chirped… finally when the batteries died I was having trouble getting one of the batteries out and turned it upside down, the case fell out and I found some fairly old rechargables that had been plugging away for a good while in the back side of the battery holder.)
The low battery audio issue is not present when monitoring through an earplug.
