Recently got this Uniden Bearcat BC80XLT 50 Channel Scanner in a "turns on but is in untested" condition. It was cheap so I thought why not. First off, when I got it the seller was right - it does turn on. But the keypad was completely unresponsive. No buttons worked at all. He failed to mention that part. But to be fair, I think he was genuinely clueless when it came to scanners.
So I took it apart, cleaned it and put it back together. Then it wouldn't even switch on anymore. Me and my fixing skills! Terrible. So I left it a few days and took it apart again. Did a bit more cleaning, put it all back together again, and this time it did power up. And the keypad worked perfectly.
I was very happy. Scanning away. It picks up well. But then the batteries started to run out. And due to how bad the battery compartment is on this scanner [there looks to have been some serious leaks over the years + there has been a DIY fix also] I was concerned that when I changed the dead batteries for some new ones, there was a chance that the scanner would not work / turn on anymore.
And I was right. Putting new batteries in and then firing up the scanner resulted in nothing. No response at all. And there was me thinking it was all fixed.
At this point I knew / was convinced that it was a problem somewhere in the battery compartment, and if the Uniden Bearcat BC80XLT had a mains adapter it would work fine. So off I went looking for a mains adapter. And by sheer luck I found one that was compatible.
That did the trick. Now the scanner works really well again. But I think the battery compartment is finished.
A few things to say about this Uniden scanner. Manual scanning is slow compared to some of my other scanners. It is a bit of an oldie though. And, it doesn't appear possible for the scanner to just scan manually by inputting a frequency, pressing enter and off you go. No, manual scanning is done only by going though the "band" options.
Silly really. Because some of the bands are quite wide. So the user has to sit there scanning through a whole band and can't type in a specific frequency and go to it directly. I couldn't find any way to do it, and there was nothing for it in the manual either. But it is over 20 years old so yeah, whatever. Other than that the scanner does work really well. And the green LCD screen light is a bit different to what I'm used to. I like it. I will probably be reselling it though as spares or repairs. -lcrmadx
No comments:
Post a Comment