UBC-3500XLT 2500 Channel Handheld Scanning Receiver

This really is a hot little scanner radio. It's the best hand-held airband radio that you can buy. It is very easy to program and use. It has great clear audio. Even the backlight operation can be programmed. The only cons is that the supplied antenna isn't much good but there are plenty of hand held antennas on the market. It really is excellent for airband use and has 8.33 kHz steps. The plastic case of the radio is very substantial. The radio runs off 3 x AA rechargeables which are supplied, or you can use alkaline AA batteries and there is an internal switch for these which cuts out the charging. A mains charger/adapter is also included.

product exactly as stated , not easy to understand strait away but once you understand how to work it and set it up its great , it does every thing you want it to

Really nice scanner great on vhf and uhf , not so good on hf ( think hf is more of a token) audio is superb , very good menu layout although can confuse some procedures, sensitivity is about 4 out of five with a decent after market antenna ( original antenna is compact but not good at all ) battery life is very good contrary to other reviews, build quality is 4 out of five IMHO 2 things that need improvement are birdies are quite bad on this radio and the back light is very disobedient and will not stay on sometimes ( a real disadvantage to the smallish display if you have poor eyesight) The signal meter is a nice touch and is accurate and reactive

This is a fantastic hand held scanner. It is complicated at first to set up but the close call on this is great, it picks up the strongest signal whilst it is in use, then it automaticaly goes to the next strongest signal. With this UBC-3500XLT Uniden I can sit in my living room and listen to radio hams, taxis Manchester tower that is approx 25 miles away and that is not bad with the standard antenna. Very good.

I hoped this would be realy usefull. Wrong. Build quality is like an old 1980s brick and compaired to my kenwood thf 7e quite deaf.Allso the software is a pain if you are used to Icom ,Yaesu etc.Nail in the coffin was the close call which was not as usefull as I had hoped .A least it sold on ebay .

I had no idea about scanners when i bought this i based my choice on reviews from the net and it works as it should, if your going to use this for sitting by the runway and listening to pilot chat then the close call feature will be brilliant for you it will automatically pick up local signals, if like me you just decided to buy a scanner out of general interest you might be able to pick up local bus communications i pick up the London buses from 40 miles away although sometimes i can only clearly hear the base station and not the driver and also i pick up Cab offices and amateur radio operators but i mainly get the same people i know their names now... having said that many times i turn the scanner on and hear nothing at all. The scanner itself can be confusing when it comes to storing frequencies in specific groups because the manual assumes you know what gruops are and different systems etc but you can let the scanner search and stop when it picks up signals and then its not that difficult learning how to store these frequencies and once you have a few stored frequencies you just press the scan button and it will continually scan those stored channels only.The only negative is the batteries take over 12 hours to charge sometimes 15 hours but they do last a good amount of time.Height seems to be the key in picking up signals the higher you are the more you will recieve and keep the ariel upright when listening and searching.

Well pleased, really good sound quality and picks up stuff that I wasn't getting on my previous scanner and this is with the supplied antenna. A bit daunting setting up the systems, groups, channels and alpha tagging them but once I got the hang of that it became second nature.

I have used other bearcat scanners in the past & when starting with the UBC-3500xlt I found it to be quite confusing. The manual doesnt really go in depth on how to begin. A quick trip onto you tube & I found some videos on how to program the scanner & how to use some of the functions. I am now about a month into using the scanner & it is programmed with most of the local transmissions in my area. I use a wall mounted skan king antenna at the side of my house to get a better range & I bought a wilson-881 handheld antenna which greatly increased reception better than the standard uniden antenna that was included. Plus points on the ubc3500 is the close call function, it is always useful to pick up local transmissions but it is an absolute pain when it picks up paging repeaters,however, the lockout function helps with this. Bad points, there arent many, I would like to have SSB,LSB,USB etc added into the system of the scanner but looking at other scanners that have this would probably bump up the price to near £600. Plenty of room to store the found frequencies, great function to search & autostore but overall a little complicated if you dont want to spend time figuring it all out. First off if you buy the ubc3500xlt, get a house mounted discone antenna & a moonraker scanner pre amplifier. this will boost your scanning by a million. Secondly, get on the internet & watch a few videos, this helped me to understand the programming a bit better.

Gut