Railfan Technology > Radio Scanner Question

MY old radio shack scanner just died. While looking online for a new one I noticed a brand called Whistler??

Can anyone advise what they are like or if they own one and how they like it?

Mike Bannon
St Catharines, ON

My understanding is that Whistler scanners are mostly inherited designs from GRE. My experience with GRE scanners has been very poor. I have one of their "top of the line" digital scanners (that will not do NXDN) and it manages to have poor sensitivity (especially in the railroad band), poor selectivity, and poor audio output--the three most important features for a radio to be used for railfanning. Whistler does make the only scanner capable of decoding NXDN digital, but it costs more than a commercial NXDN-capable radio that will perform far better. So, I would avoid Whistler. Read all of the other posts on radios that I and others have made--do a search on the Railfan Technology forum here.

Seems kinda expensive, I looked around and the price seems to vary, for that money I'd like to see some hard specs on sensitivity. A worthy radio should list sensitivity around 0.2 microvolts in the RR Band. Here's some info I found (Amazon also has a lot of comparative info but no hard specs ):

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/WS1040

Hobby scanners have the advantage of being keyboard friendly and also cover a number of different activities, RR Band and Public safety bands but also aircraft, etc. Competition for this would be something from Uniden/Bearcat with similar coverage, but make sure you find a decent sensitivity. This particular model seems to be heavy on keyboard and memory tricks, saving banks of frequencies and transferring to a PC, etc. which is big feature for Police and Fire in big cities.

Also look for a tough case, sensible batteries and audio output ( s/b near 300-500 mW, good HAM or industrial radios will go to 700mW ).

+ should add that I wouldn't bother with anything that features 'trunk tracking' unless that's of specific value to your area. That method seems to dull the sensitivity for RR uses and adds complexity to the keyboard. It appears to rely on plenty of high powered transmitters for specific purposes and locations, not really how RR's operate at the moment.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/17 08:46 by TCnR.

The Yeasu FT-25R thread below from a few weeks ago got me thinking it's time to replace my 24 year old Radio Shack Pro-51. I finally settled on a Yeasu FT-60R because it had software available for programming, as does most Ham radios. I found one new for $155. I also discovered 2 days ago that FT-25R software is now available as well at the RTSYSTEMSINC.com website. I also purchased the optional microphone/speaker connector wire so I can use my regular headset when riding Amtrak, a 6-AA cell optional battery back (I read online that rechargables work fine although the manual states not to use them. I concur they work fine!), and a male SMA to BNC adapter so I can use my RR frequency tuned antenna that I had on the Radio Shack. It's also noted that SMA connectors have a life-expectancy of about 500 on/off cycles, so leaving the adapter in place will effectively remove that limitation.

Having programmed about 80 channels in my old Pro-51 and 'losing them all' when I dropped it, finding my information again and reprogramming it was a nightmare. With the software for the FT-60R, I simply typed in all 96 AAR channels in and then set each band for the channels as desired. It's all done on a spreadsheet-like screen form and very easy to do and to verify that I put in the right info!

But, there are now 190+ AAR analog channels available for use by the railroads, and the Yaesu amateur models will not tune the splinter channels. That, to me, is a deal-killer if one is shopping for a new radio. If one is only going to worry about the pre-2013 97 AAR channels, I would spring for a used Kenwood TK-290 commercial radio. It has 160 channel capability, loud audio, bulletproof construction, and about the best selectivity and sensitivity that I've ever seen in a portable VHF radio. They can be bought pretty often for less than the cost of an amateur portable because so many government agencies have gone digital and can no longer use the analog TK-290's. The TK-290 will do the splinter channels--it just doesn't have enough channel storage to store them all (the TK-280 does--250 channels). The only sour spot for the TK-290 and its TK-280 cousin is that the programming software for them does not play very nice with Windows 7 or Windows 10. I do know radio techs that can get around that limitation, though. I still have a TK-290 that I just can't bring myself to sell, just because it is such a good radio, though the Icom IC-F3161DT comes very close and is NXDN-capable.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/17 16:11 by WW.

Keep in mind Mike prices quoted are in US dollars.
Here in Canada the price could easily be 30-50 percent higher
plus a minimum sales tax of 13 percent.

And availability of amateur two metre ham radios are from
only two local outlets you in Canada, RadioWorld on Steeles Avenue
West in Toronto and Durham Radio in Whitby.