Signal Communication R-537S Airband

Here [video below] is the Signal Communication Corp. R-537S radio picking up an airband transmission [Birmingham airport]. This radio is now for sale on eBay. And this video was uploaded here due to eBay listings having problems with video uploads. It's a really good little radio for its age. A bit of a classic these days among the airband crowd. Picks up well. Frequency Range: 118-136 MHz. This one comes with 2 antenna's, earpiece, manual and box. Box is battered. And the battery cover is a replacement, just a piece of metal with some tape on it. But overall the condition of the radio is fairly good. Not too bad at all. These don't come up for sale all that often now in working condition, so I doubt this radio will be available for long.

If you're interested in Signal radios, take a look at the R-537S' digital big brother, the R-550. Great radio, very sensitive. I will probably be listing that on eBay soon too. So keep a look out if your in the market for one. Quite rare to find one these days.

Signal Communication Corp. R-550 Radio

Straight out the 80's. Quite a rare Airband receiver. Frequency range is 108 - 142 MHz. Even rarer to find one with the original leather case. Out of all the Signal R-550's I've seen for sale, and there hasn't been that many, none of them have come with the case. So its great to have one that does. In saying that, the Signal R-550's I've seen come up for sale have been in absolutely excellent condition. Similar to my one. But they had the original box and manual. And with the original box, I'd probably rather have theirs than mine. But still, my one isn't a bad a trade-off coming with the case and all.

The R550 [108MHz - 142MHz] is very sensitive and picks up really well. Case not shown here. I'll picture the case in another post soon. This was just a quickie.

So, how well does it work?

Oh, it works really well. Because its only made for airband it seems so finely tuned for that frequency range. I think even the original aerial is specifically tuned for the airband range. It works great. I was testing it out, picking up Birmingham airport. And it picked it up clearer than both the Quansheng UV K5 (8) and the Icom IC R6 [will write a post on this excellent little radio soon]. Given the fact that the Signal Communication Corp. R-550 is from the 80's, I'd say that's pretty impressive. This little radio is like an airbanders dream, and I'm sure when I put my one up for sale, it won't be up for sale for very long.

Batteries

It takes 3 AAA batteries. There is a little connection on the side that looks like it could be an AC power supply adapter port. But I have no idea on what type of voltage / milliamps (mA) specifics it could be compatible with. So I won't risk plugging in an adapter, as I wouldn't want to risk damaging the radio. It's a shame the manual is so hard to find. I would love to have a read through it. But its not absolutely essential as I quickly figured out how to use this receiver, and that's the thing that counts. 

And 3 AAA's is quite easy to live with. Might write a post about another Signal radio soon, the R-537. I own that one, too. Not as rare as this one, but still quite a hard radio to find in working condition these days.

They both look quite basic, but they are high quality for their ages. The volume and squelch knobs are made of metal and feel professional and tight to turn. Nice radios. #Japan

I'm selling it

I've got too many radios so this one is now for sale. If you are interested post a comment. I will add a full post on its description etc, with pictures and a video of the radio working. I only sell / post within the UK. Price is £150. I will accept a bank transfer for payment and will post the radio by Royal Mail Special Delivery [included in the price].

Quansheng UV 5R Plus Walkie Talkie

To me, the UV 5R Plus is a scanner, that's what I use it for. But yes, it is really a walkie talkie, a transceiver. I recently bought one. I took a while because I was waiting for the price drop on Aliexpress. That's the only thing I dislike about Aliexpress. Their price fluctuations. It's up and down like crazy. So up and down its ridiculous. Anyway, the price finally went down again and I bought a Quansheng UV 5R Plus for really cheap. Great. It arrived in good time and is perfect, brand new, working well. And it is confirmed from my other post [newer radios come with a better aerial] that even this older model 5R Plus does come with a newer antenna.

The nice blue screen of the UV 5R Plus

Really, I bought this 5R Plus because I wanted to try some other programming software. In some previous posts I talked about how the Quansheng UV K5 (8), once modified with egzumer, can not pick up any frequencies down at 27MHz. So I wanted to use the 5R Plus as a test radio to install either some older versions of egzumer, or try out some other program software like UVMOD and others.

Well, after looking through a fair few of the software's available, it's clear to me that egzumer is the easiest to install, and one of the best all rounders. While UVMOD does look good, It seems a bit confusing as to whether it actually fully replaces the stock software already on the radio, or just replaces parts of it. You can choose different features to install individually, so I think it doesn't replace everything [correct me if I'm wrong]. But I'm looking for something that completely replaces the stock software, so it looks like egzumer fits the bill.

So I think I'm just going to install that again. And in terms of testing the older versions, I don't think they will be any better in the lower frequencies than the newer versions, so I might just install the latest version of egzumer and leave it at that. I don't really want to experiment too much with different programs / firmware and end up bricking the radio.

I know there are a few people looking for the manual for the 5R Plus, so I might upload it. In the form of taking a picture of each page written in English lol. Maybe some people might find it useful. I wouldn't expect much though. I think its only a few pages of basic information.

Realistic Pro-50 Scanner Transmission

Here is a quick video of the old school Realistic Pro-50 Scanner picking up an emergency services transmission in Birmingham UK. All things considered, the Pro 50 is not a bad old receiver. It's old tech and only has 20 channels, but still receives all the transmissions that my other scanners pick up. And thanks to the screen being a bit like a watch or calculator, it's much less demanding on power, so the batteries seem to last quite some time. Takes 6 AA batteries or can be run on a 9V DC mains adapter.

My New [Old] Scanner Wire Aerial

Check out my latest scanner aerial. It's basically a piece of wire with a BNC connection lol. But guess what. It works really well. It came with this weird home made airband scanner I managed to pick up. Not the scanner pictured in this post. The air-band receiver this antenna came with doesn't work. All I'm getting is noise.

Proper old school aerial. Much better than these two

I've had a look at it and I think the problem is a blown fuse. So I'm gonna have to get some fuses. There's three different types inside this receiver. The one that looks like its blown is a T100ma 250V (S) Slow Blow. Hopefully replacing this does the trick and I can get it to work. I'll make a post about it soon and show some pics etc. Somebody has literally made it themselves. It's very basic, but the person who made it obviously has some knowledge with electronics / radio building. It's quite an interesting item. 

Works just as well as a stock antenna. If not a little bit better. 

Scanner in the picture: A very fitting, old school Realistic Pro 50

There is an RX receiver inside called something like "R & EW CH Airband RX". Never heard of it. Not that I'm the all-knowing RX receiver man or anything. I know nothing about receiver components that are installed on the internal boards. However, I can't find out much about it online, so maybe its a bit of an unknown. But yeah, I'll post some info about it soon. Might wait until I get the fuse. But that could be a while as it is out of stock in the few places I've tried.

Quansheng UV K5 - Best Place To Buy?

If you don't want to read, the best place to buy from in my opinion is Aliexpress. It's the cheapest place without a doubt, and anywhere else you may be considering buying from [eBay, Amazon etc] has almost definitely sourced their stock from either Aliexpress or Alibaba anyway. It's all coming from the same place. So you are getting the exact same product from Aliexpress that you would buy from eBay, Amazon, Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace etc, only paying far less money.

One of my Quanshengs all brand new in the box

The only downfall is you are having something delivered from Asia / China rather than your own country, which can put some people off. But I have ordered a fair few UV K5's now from Aliexpress, as well as other items like antennas, aerials, leads, multi-meters, SMA / BNC adapters etc, and have had no problems what so ever. They all arrived within 5 - 7 days to the UK.

For first time buyers

On Aliexpress there is a "welcome deal". This gives first time buyers / users of the site the opportunity to get a large discount on the first item they buy. If you buy more than one item on your first order, only one item is eligible for the welcome deal discount. You can choose which item you want to select for the welcome deal discount. I just choose the most expensive item, which was the Quansheng radio. Works out really cheap.

And I've also got to give a shout out to EVRI. I think Evri deal with the shipping from abroad for Aliexpress once it lands in the UK, and it has been excellent. Their tracking system is absolutely spot on. Keeps the buyer informed every step of the way, as does Aliexpress' tracking also. If you want to read a review on the K5 / K6 before making your decision on whether to grab one or not - take a look here: https://lcrmadx.blogspot.com/2023/11/quansheng-uv-k6-review.html

Here is the post that I said - if you don't want to read

Well, I've bought quite a few Quansheng UV K5's over the last 6 - 12 months. So I thought I'd write a quick and to-the-point post about where the best place is to buy one from. I'll let you into a little secret. When I tried to buy my first UV K5, I did so on eBay. I found it, paid for it, but then came across the Aliexpress website.

The price I paid from the eBay seller compared to the price they were selling for on Aliexpress was quite a difference. Once I seen those prices on Aliexpress, I did a quick bit of research online [Reddit and few other sites] to see if Aliexpress was safe and legit. Turns out it was for the most part. But many people said to only buy from sellers with over 95% positive feedback. I have largely stuck to that and had no issues at all. And to be honest, I have bought from a few sellers with lower feedback scores than 95% and still had no problems. But its a good rule of thumb to stick with.

Upgraded Quansheng enters the matrix

Needless to say, I was not happy paying £30 GBP on eBay for a K5 when they were being sold on Aliexpress for much much less, so I made up an excuse and asked the seller for a refund because I had bought the radio in error. He gave me a refund no problem, but I did feel a bit bad about doing that. Anyway, I couldn't turn down a bargain like that, so I left him positive feedback and moved on.

A few Quanshengs later and I'm planning on getting the newest model next, the UV K5 (99). It's supposed to be really good. Out the box It has a much wider frequency range than the older models [20MHz - 1000MHz]. With such a wide range it makes me feel like it might not be worth modding it with egzumer. 

But, I have read that without the mod, there is a design / software fault with the stock software. And its something like this. When the torch light is activated the radio can freeze and needs to be turn off and on again to be usable. So perhaps installing egzumer would get rid of this issue. I'd have to test it. I'd probably never use the torch anyway, so may just leave it with the standard stock software.

GRECOM PSR-295 Overview

I've been impressed with all the GRE / GRECOM receivers I've had over the years. I love reliability, and the GRE branded scanners I've had have always been reliable, and very capable. When I found out that GRE was Japanese [Japan-based], the reliability made sense. Even though mine says Made in China on the back lol. The PSR-295 is a really good scanner. It has way more features than I really need. But for the right person it ticks many boxes. Mine had an non-stock antenna, a Uniden Bearcat, and it seems like it was geared / fine tuned toward Airband frequencies. Picks up well in other areas too, but seemed stronger in airband.

Paused is monitor on this scanner

I like how easy it is to manually scan with the 295. The screen is also very good. I like scanners that have the orange / amber light up displays, and this model has a nice one. Only problem is, I think it largely contributes to one of the things I don't really like about this scanner. And that is the battery life. The battery life is quite poor. I always used normal batteries, but I would definitely recommend rechargeables or have it plugged into a mains adapter.

Those batteries drain pretty fast

One other thing I found requiring a bit more work to manage was the 1000 channels. I think this was a bit too much for me. And it seemed a bit confusing, as it just randomly picks a channel bank, so everything seemed a bit all over the place. Maybe it was just me, as I'm more at home with scanners that have 200 channels maximum. Each to their own I suppose.

GRECOM PSR-295 Quick specification

1000 channels

Frequency Range:

25 - 88 MHz

118 - 174 MHz

216 - 512 MHz

806 - 960 MHz

1240 - 1300 MHz

Takes 4 AA batteries

The monitor function is actually called pause on this scanner. A one push button operation that works well. For an averaged sized scanner, its extremely light in weight. Personally, I like something that's got a bit of weight to it. With a bit of weight a radio feels better in the hand and feels like a well built quality item. This does feel fairly well-built, but its almost a bit too light. But some people might love that.

Overall its good. It has a dedicated HAM button, alpha tagging features, a PC / IF jack on the side so it can [I believe] be connected to a computer [I never did it], and a fairly good frequency range. I actually sold my one [in the pictures + video] not long ago. And it wasn't up for sale for very long. It was snapped up quickly. I don't regret selling it as I have many scanners, maybe too many. Including more GRE / GRECOMS, so I can't keep them all. But yeah, a good receiver. And at the right price I would buy another one.