Commtel COM204 [Realistic Pro 43]

You can have all the new radio scanners you want. I've got a few Quansheng's and Baofeng's etc. But if you're someone who's owned lots of older scanners over the years, and at some point sold most of them, the temptation sometimes comes back to go out and buy some older radios. The nostalgia can be strong. And there's something different to using an older scanner. It feels a bit more special. A bit like a digital camera that can take 1000 photos on an SD card Vs a film camera that takes 24. That's what's happened to me lately. The nostalgia came for me. I ended up buying two older scanners I've never owned before. Those are, a Commtel COM204, which is basically a Realistic Pro 43 with a different speaker grill, and a Yupiteru MVT-7000 which I might write a little review on soon.

The camera flash makes it look like its in bad condition. But its not!

Anyway, this is just a quick post about the golden oldie Commtel COM204 [Realistic Pro 43]. My first impressions. Despite how popular the the Realistic Pro 43 was, and still is, I've never owned one. I'd heard about how good it was and have recently been reading about it and watching video reviews. So I seen this Commtel 204 up for sale on eBay and thought I'd send the guy an offer. He accepted, so I got the radio really cheap. But he took ages to post the radio.

Well it arrived and had batteries inside so I was able to turn it on and get scanning straight away. Condition was overall very good for a 30+ year old scanner. There are a few problems linked to this scanner. The main one being the keypad buttons can go bad and stop responding. But I think this is only after many years of use. I think / hope my one will be good for a few years yet as it doesn't really seem to have had much use. The keypad responds well.

Using the scanner and I can see why so many people hold it in such high regard. It's considered one of the best older scanners. It has 200 channels to play with. Here are some good points that I have found so far.

Very nice scan speed. It has hyperscan, so scans fast. Has a good receiver for such an old scanner. And the receive is very tight and solid. No fake signals, no hissing / stopping in weird places were there's nothing [unlike the Yupiteru!]. Just a really nice well balanced scan.

AM / FM button. This is great for people who love airband. And this radio is well known for its very good air-band reception. One press of this button swaps modulation from AM to FM. I have no use for it though really as I'm not into air band.

Very easy to use. It's so easy to save channels, perform a channel scan etc. Compared to some scanners out there, this is one of the nicest and easiest to use. There is one little flaw, though, that I will mention below in the no-so-good points.

Great squelch. The squelch is very well behaved on the Commtel COM204. No choppiness like on my Quanshengs. This is because a manual squelch can be set lower. Whereas a modified Quansheng, with a digital / on screen squelch has a lowest setting of 1. But this is still too high for a lot of signals. As a result they come through choppy / broken. I did find a fix for this. Another method is to just disable the squelch altogether when you have a signal that you want to listen to for a while.

Good speaker. Some people have said the speaker on this old scanner isn't great. But I think its actually quite good for an older receiver. I mean, some of the old scanner that are held in such high regard, like the AOR 8000, has a terrible speaker. This one is much better.

Well built. This radio feels great in the hand. Especially with batteries in, which gives it that extra weight. It's a fairly small but sturdy well built older scanner that seems like it would take some knocking around and keep on working.

No so good points

All scanners have them. With this one, firstly the light. The light is terrible. It's like the little amber light you get in those early Casio watches where it just lights up the side of the screen. 

Second, but a bit unfair. The keypad doesn't light up. So for people who use this radio in dimly lit areas, like me, it can be a bit annoying.

Third. The beeping. The beeping is a slight annoyance. Each pressing of a button on the keypad is followed by a beep. This can not be turned off without modifying the scanner. That mod I believe requires the opening of the radio and doing to soldering work. So there's no way I'm doing that! Also, the low battery warning is also a beep with the screen flashing on and off at the same time.

Fourth. It takes 6 AA batteries. This is a world away from the newer radios, like the Quansheng K6, that have a lithium Ion battery that lasts ages. Charge it once and it that's it. It's good for easily a week or two with my usage time. And even after around two years of use, they are still going strong. And also, with the older radios such as the Commtel, it uses a battery holder, and they can be hard to find for sale if a replacement is needed.

Fifth. One thing I can't figure out with this radio, is how to perform a manual scan without saving the frequency to a channel first. I don't think it has this feature. For instance. If you just type in a frequency in manual mode, it won't let you continue after the first 3 digits have been typed. It thinks you are trying to go to one of the 200 channels. The only way I could input a full frequency was in program mode.

And with that you have to save it to memory. After that you can press the "direct" button and start manually scanning the frequency range starting from the saved channels frequency. From there its plain sailing. But I suppose this is just a quirk of older technology. If I'm doing something wrong, and someone knows how to do this without having to save to memory or start a manual scan from a channel, post a comment below.

Sixth. Mono headphone jack, which is a sign of the times with the early to mid 1990's scanners. But there is a workaround. Just put the headphones in your ears, plug them into the 3.5mm jack on the scanner and pull the headphone connection jack out a little bit until you find the sweet spot where you can then hear sound through both ears.

Am I glad I bought it?

Absolutely. Despite a few minor niggles that are common with old scanners [they all have a few things] this radio is definitely a keeper. It's a solid radio. I really like it. I can live with the poor light, the 6 AA batteries and the odd programming annoyance [which is easy to get around]. This is what makes it an older scanner. 

I have to give it a lot of credit, it's over 30 years old, and really there still isn't that much bad to say about it. Still works great. And no doubt, It's good points far outweigh the few bad points that were really [mostly] just how things were 30 years ago. A bit more tech-primitive. And in many ways I prefer that. I've been using up to date stuff for a while now, so It's been great stepping back in time using this scanner. 

If you're looking for an old school scanner radio that has a fairly wide frequency range: 66-88MHz, 118-136.975MHz, 137-174MHz, 220-512MHz, 806-999.9875MHz, has excellent airband, and excellent receive in general, give this one some serious consideration.