First impressions of GRECOM | GRE PSR-300
This is going to be a long series. I am going to be spacing things out a bit and so I’m starting this post on January 1st. It will likely publish on the 30th. I’m going to delve into quite a few aspects of the GRE PSR-300 in greater detail in future posts, but this is going to be a more general writeup.
First let me start by saying wow to scannermaster.com I think I ordered about 1PM on the 28th and the thing was in my hands at 4PM on the 30th of December. UPS certainly had a big hand in that as well as simple geography, but that is impressive. Orders before 3pm ship the same day and they do it (as long as there’s no extra programming needed.)
The scanner itself. Nice packaging, glossy shop display box that I could spend a little while reading as it covers the basic features. Included AC adapter, scanner, antenna, manual, warranty card, alkaline battery holder (black) and rechargeable (yellow) battery holder. I had ordered the DC adapter extra. I’d love to see both included for device like this…
Now, the old scanner I’m used to is a Uniden Bearcat handheld BC65XLT Portable Scanner. It was made in the late 80s/early 90s and I imagine “they don’t make them like that anymore”. My first impression of this unit is that it was a bit smaller, similar boxy scanner look (which is just fine by me.) The plastic felt a bit flimsy in comparison to the old, but I liked the overall look of it. (I’d like a more sturdy case, but other than that things look good.)
So, I found 4 alkaline batteris and got it setup, powered it on and tried the weather radio. (Of course, I attached the antenna as well. It’s the stock rubber duck antenna for now.) Within a couple seconds I was listening to our local NOAA weather radio with more clarity than I’ve been able to in the past from the house. The speaker on the PSR-300 is nice and I was able to crank up the volume without it losing clarity like the old Uniden.
At first the keypad and other buttons (30) is a bit overwhelming, but after a bit of time to work through the features it settles in and makes good sense. Now, I’m not new to scanners, but trunking is new to me. I had not ordered a computer/programming cable thinking I would prefer to program manually. The programming took a few minutes to get the hang of, but I spent the better part of the evening plugging in the amateur radio and other uhf/vhf frequencies that I have collected over the years and was soon pulling in signals from repeaters that I hadn’t heard before. On the frequencies I have picked up before it seemed to be as good (or better) than the clarity on the Uniden.
Headphones are full stereo (the uniden had diminished Right channel for some reason.) At this point I’ve tried out the AC and DC adapters and have now swapped to rechargable batteries which are charging currently while the unit is on.
Now, I plan to use future posts to detail some of the programming process and I’m trying to make this just a “first impressions” post. Overall though the first impressions are very good. Although the case seems flimsy it has already had one fall of about 4 and 1/2 feet (ear plugs can be a bad thing sometimes.) The good news is that I think I hurt my ear (as the earplug yanked out) more than the scanner (which landed with a solid smack). So, that plastic is a bit better made than I thought. Good!
One critique so far is on the manual. There have een some things that I’ve tried to find in the manual and can’t. There is no index (although I’ve tried searching the pdf of it some as well.) One thing that is disappointing is that there is no “legend” of display items which so many electronic products do. There was one glyph on the display that I wondered for the better part of a day and a half what it was for and finally discovered it on my own. Yes, I did look in the manual, I went through the manual several times, and searched online several different ways, but finally had to figure it out myself.
For my taste a manual should be there for the hard questions, the more in depth answers such as “what the heck is that G for”. Of course, I found the answer and will talk about that in a future post. So, I’d love to see a more detailed manual. Unfortunately so many electronics manufacturers are getting away from “real” manuals. I hope they will start reversing that trend!
I have not ordered a data cable yet although I have resolved that I should if for no other reason than to backup my configuration in case the unit ever needs to be re-initialized. It would not be fun to have to enter everything a second time. I have also ordered another antenna. I wanted to start out with the stock antenna so I would have a good baseline for comparison with the old Uniden (which also has a stock rubber ducky antenna). I have ordered one though that I will ALSO be reviewing here and hopefully it will be available for me for use on a number of handhelds for some time.
Once you’ve programmed in a few frequencies and text tags in it really is not a problem to deal with for manual programming. It can get a bit tedious, but really I feel more comfortable tagging channels on this than I ever have text messaging on a cell phone. I’ve even gone so far as to configure the FIPS for SAME coverage and a couple of trunking systems (which I’ve been able to monitor as well.) There are really too many features to talk about in just one post (or 5) and so I’ll go ahead and wrap this one up here. Overall I’m very pleased and already have a few ideas of some of the details I’m going to look at in future reviews.
