Railfan Technology > ICOM R6

Does any body  utilize an ICOM R6 receiver to listen to railways, in lieu of either
a Yaseu VX-170 or Uniden or similar scanner?
Your thoughts?

 

The R6 specs are about what one would expect from a wide-spectrum scanner, OK sensitivity but mediocre selectivity.  For a radio for railfanning, sensitivity is important, but selectivity is really important.  Most of today's better quality scanners have fairly good sensitivity, but their selectivity is almost always subpar.    At 180 mW, its audio output is pretty ill-suited for use in anything but a pretty quiet environment.  By comparison, most commercial portable radios have 500 mW to 1W of audio output, and even that sometimes is not enough in a noisy enviironment. 

The R6 is fairly inexpensive, but it's the old "You get what you pay for" thing.  Simply put, if you buy a receiver/scanner like the R6 and you expect to hear everything that the railroader standing next to you with a commercial radio is hearing on his/her radio, you'll be in for a big disappointment.  That's the difference between your scanner and his/her radio that costs three times as much.

A friend has two Uniden scanners and a Yaseu 120 and as sometimes advises those Uniden
devices sometimes miss a transmission. 
He was wondering if something
"better" which were his words, might be better.
Then too he is not chasing just railway transmissions, vessels on the Great Lakes and
aircraft factor into his  equation. Personally have enough fun deciphering railway radio transmissions
without adding other radio transmissions into the mix. Each to their own.