Railfan Technology > Purchased a BC125at scanner

Hello all,

I just purchased a Uniden Bearcat scanner since my old radioshack is seeing it's age now and I can hardly get the North County San Diego Sub dispatcher from San Clemente like I use too.  Just within the last week I have noticed this so I think my radio is going bad.   I even tried with the railroad radio tuned antenna and  it didn't perform that much better than my longer antenna.   So I am at a loss I hope something didn't change here.  I hope the radio will be better than radioshacks models.  Never been a fan of RS since my pro-62 broke and they failed to repair it and they told me to take a hike.  So I ordered this one on Amazon.   I am using this radio for a interum radio until the railroads switch to digital then I will look for something alot more powerful. I have a Pro-528 now.  Any info would be great  

Thanks,

Kurt

Had one (BC125), and used briefly until buying a Yaesu.  Decent
performance, but (at least when I got mine) the antenna
that came with it was not good for RR reception.  I had a tuned
antenna from an old HX-1000 that significantly improved
performance over the stock antenna.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/18 08:15 by NKP715.

A simple and quick way to compare radios is to tune to the NWS weather broadcasts in the 162 MHz range. You can quickly compare the reception of the radios, any gross differences will be obvious. Some areas have multiple transmitters at different locations, better radios will receive more than one of those sites. Failing radios can be compared againest the mostly constant broadcast power and stability. Also good to compare antenna performance.

Not very technical but easy to use since the Weather broadcasts are almost everywhere in the US of A.

The Bearcat BC125at has a pretty solid reputation.

I have to back up what TCnR says about the NWS radio.  It's hard to make any comparisons using railroad communications.  Other than the dispatchers and the defect detectors, everything else you hear is a moving target.  The transmitters on the locomotives are several times stronger than the guy on the ground with a handy talkie.  Even the tilting of the antenna can make a difference.  You need a constant for comparing radios.  The NWS stations are at 162.5 MHz (approximately) which is close enough to the railroads on 161 MHz.  In most areas of the USA you can receive at least one of the stations, and in many areas, you can receive multiple stations.  I did an antenna comparison a few years ago.  With my standard antenna, I was able to receive three stations.  With the replacement, I received 5 stations.  I was careful to not move the radio even an inch so that all other things were equal.  

John
 

I did a comparison with the BC-125AT with several other radios that I posted about some months back:  https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?9,4430676,4431896#msg-4431896 .    The short synopsis:  the BC-125AT performs fairly well with a 160 mHz tuned antenna, but will still fall short of good commercial equipment.  Like most scanners, it is susceptible to RF intereference, though it is better than many scanners.  Since I did that test, Uniden has come out with a firmware upgrade to make a couple of their digital scanners NXDN-capable--I haven't seen or used one so I have no opinion about how well they work.

Since the post referenced above, I also did a brief comparison test between the Icom IC-F3161 DT and the  Kenwood NX-200 portable (the NX-210 is the "railroad" version of the NX-200, the only difference being the keypad).  The IC-F3161 DT and NX-200 were nearly identical in receive performance.

Using the NOAA weather channels can give a good comparison because they are in the same general frequency range as the RR band.  That said, the weather channels are higher wattage channels and are still wide band, so they obvisously will "reach" farther than railroad transimissions.

Well I go my radio folks and I have to say it is somewhat different than the radioshack scanner in programming.  i had some difficulty so I just installed a few frequencies and it comes in pretty good.  i haven't figured out how to use the service mode though.  It only seems to work for police and fire etc.  i can't put it on railroads so I am just simply entering the frequecies in the banks for the railroads because that seems easier at this time.  Perhaps I will figure the other out.  Thanks for all the input guys and I do intend on the I-com or Nexedge at a later date when I know more when the railroads will switch to digital.

Thanks again,

Kurt

^ Keystroke func+Srch takes you to Service Search Mode.  Pressing 5 turns on or turns off Railroad search.  Easy peasey.

Hello guys,

I was wondering if this radio has a battery save mode on it?  I didnt see anything in the instruction book and it eats up Alkline battery life like crazy.  I only had half a day until the scanner starting beeping with the low battery tone.  Also how can you tell what your battery status is  I am really new with this new scanner so forgive me with all these questions.  I am used to the radioshack models and this seems quite different.

Thank you,

Kurt

A suggestion for the batteries which has been made on TO before:

>>  Get some Eneloop NiMH AA batteries at least 2000 mAh rating and a smart charger.  A good long term investment and battery life problems will disappear.

I got a BC125AT several years ago and am quite satisfied. I use a rubber ducky antenna specifically cut for the RR band and it works well. Even better is when I use a car roof-mounted antenna, also cut to RR band; Improves the "reach" by quite a bit.

I found ALL of the AAR frequencies already programmed in; no need for the programming software I bought (wasted $ I guess). Oh well. You can also set it to search the whole RR band. Usually I just let it scan all of the AAR frequencies; very fast.

The stock batteries are rechargable (charger included) and they seem to have average life (last most of a day). Recharging takes awhile, best done overnight. The car adapter also works well.

Maybe not as good as a true two-way radio, but less expensive and works well for what I do. And was ready to go right out of the box.

Hitch

I just bought a BC125AT also.  I'm having trouble finding the pre-programmed railroad bank.  The listing of banks on page 50 of the manual shows 10 banks, but none are in the 159-161 MHz frequencies that I would expect for railroads.  Suggestions anyone?  WW above suggests it is bank 5 - but to me that looks like 108-136 MHz.  Am I missing something?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/18 09:10 by dwatry.

OK I finally figured it out.  But it's not explained very well in te manual.  The frequencies on the preprgrammed bands in the manual don;t correspond to the same numberred bands in Service Search mode.  Confusing!