Review of UBC9000XLT.

Update at 980305 I've gotted my scanner back from the repearment today and used it for about 8 hours. The intermodulation is pretty heavly reduced, around 79mhz it's pretty much gone. I've heard it a few times, but not as much as it's annoying, also some freqs between 68-80 mhz are intermoded, i have around 100 freq's in that range thought and only one of thoose has intermod, it's still usable thought but i have it att'd. Most of my background-noice in the 160mhz-range is gone or heavy reduced. I noticed some celluar-images thought around 400mhz but not on any common freqs. I wouldn't say the intermod is worse then on other scanner's now, even thought the ubc9000xlt seams to be a very sensetive scanner, i can nothing else then highly recommend it. Update at 980227 I've been notified by my reparment-man that my filters were faulty in my UBC9000-XLT. The whole mainboard has been changed and the unit are on it's way here. I'll report as soon as possible what this helped intermod-problems. Update at 980202 My supplier have told me something probably is wrong with my scanner with should case all the excessive intermodulation. It's currently on repairment, i'll get back here with info as soon as i get it back. First Words This is my review of the UBC9000XLT, it should not be seen as encounter to buy or not to buy it. It's just my thoughts and experiences of the radio, remember that a radio behaves diffrently concering intermod etc on how radio-active your area is. Please note that there probably is some miss-spellings here and there. I'll fix them as soon as possible, but i wanted to get the review out asap. First Impressions My first impression of the scanner was the look of it. It seamed quite well organized with a solid vfo and nice buttons. I hocked it up right away to my D-130 (discone antenna) and started it up. The first thing i noticed was an VERY irritating programming-problem. If sweden we use frequencys like .0125 and so on (12.5 khz steps). Even duh the UBC-version is european the step-size for the 79mhz-band which is the police-band in sweden was WRONG, this made me have to first type the frequency followed by ENTER-key. In normal cases the programming of the channel would stop here, homever i had to first change mode on the VFO to Freq, then turn it a little to activate the vfo, then press SHIFT and a key for the 12.5 khz stepsize, then tune in the frequency with the VFO and finaly press enter followed by mode-change back to chan-mode on the VFO, this is VERY frustating. Just think what i felt like when i had to do this 200 times, and that's exactly what i had too. After that i was pretty pleased with the success of my next tests, homever i noticed an excessive amount of intermod around the 68-80mhz range from the radio-band (88-108). The speed of scan/search rate is great, the autosort realy helps out to keep the 100 chans/sek. I also noticed that the squelch seamed abit miss-tuned, even pretty weak signals still were there even that the squech was att FULL. Buttons, VFO, speaker etc The look of the scanner is pretty well-organized even duh i think that the step-rate could be changed easyed, have its own buttons etc The VFO works as expected and feeled pretty solid, it has a hole in it to put a finger for faster spinning as well, just like on the communication-receivers. The display is very bright with 3 modes, i find the mode without backlight useless. It's way to dark, the dimmer-setting looked best even duh it didn't differ that much from the full backlight-mode, The display could be read from a great number of angels. The buttons are some plastic some rubber, the keypad is of rubber and mose of the other ones in plastic, i find the rubber ones best to press of course, but the plastic ones works as well without any problems, if i would be in charge duh i would make all buttons of rubber. The sound from the internal speaker is loud and good, i wished it was possible to bring on some more power on it duh, but the sound from it is nice and i don't need an external speaker here. Scanning, searching and Programming The speed is great is you probably already know. It has 20 banks with 25 channels per bank with a total of 500. The banks are named a-i and 1-0 (0 is bank 10). When scanning just press the a-i keys or the 1-9 and 0 keys to enable/disable banks. The searching is pretty average, type the lower limit followed by Limit, then upper limit and Limit again. Make any step-changes etc and press Search to start search. 50 frequencys can be locked out when seaching, this is nearly always enough. The speed in seachmode can be increased to 300 steps/sek with the turbo when steprate is 5khz. The scanner dosn't always keep the 100 steps/sek, in noicy places it keeps going up and down But it's always fast and it works fine, the limit's are viewed when first entered but aint visiable during the search, nither the limit's can't be stored in any way, the scanner remembers the last search duh and a push on the search-button restores it at the last position. The programming is of normal uniden-style, press the frequency and enter. You can also tune a frequencys with the VFO or select the channel to program with the VFO. Please note duh that it has a big STEP-PROBLEM, since it tryes to correct freqs programmed to nearest valid freq by the default step selected problems arise when you trys this. You have to first enter the frequency followed by enter, the scanner changes it to nearest 5khz step. The use the VFO in freq-mode and change the step-rate, tune it with the VFO and press enter followed by a mode-change of the VFO to chan-mode (not needed duh). This problem arise when you try to program a 12.5-step freq in a default 5khz step band. In sweden nearly ALL bands that use 12.5khz step-rate the scanner defaults to 5khz. So the programming in this case is TERRIBLE!!! Performance The performance is good BUT if you have strong radio-transmitters nearby you probably will get BIG problems with the 68-100mhz range. The scanner seams to make intermod VERY easly on this band, it works much better on higher frequencys, also i got a strong paging-transmitter in my area on 169mhz, the sound of this can be heard even on the strongest channels 50mhz around. The ATT kills it duh (as well as the signal on some of the weaker ones). I've heard alot of good thoughts about the UBC9000XLT when it comes to intermod and it DOES work good on the higher bands, but on low VHF i would rate it worse then a handheld in some aspects, i had a UBC3000XLT (handheld) to compare with which was hoocked up to the same antenna, it didn't have ANY problems in 68-100 duh to strong radio-stations at all. A filter that kills the 68-108 (radio-band in sweden) would probably take care of the problem. But still the scanner DOES NOT WORK GREAT on these bands, some people duh dosen't have this problem at all. it probably all depends on the amount of strong signals in your area, antenna and so on... But at THIS place i would NOT say that it works great. That was the bad part, now to the good stuff. The scanner seams to have good selectivity and sensebility on the bands not affected by the intermod-problem, and even on the intermod-bands it works good on the freqs that aint affected by to strong intermod, but it still is a BIG problem. Features The scanner is very feature-rich, autosort is one of the best. It sorts the freqs within all banks for faster scanning which helps to keep the promissed 100 chans/sek up, The autostore duh is not that great. It's an feature to automatically store freqs found while seaching in selected bank(s). it works BUT it dosn't take note of the locked out freq's so in real noicy bands you'll probably just end up with tons of noicy freqs and dont know which real is something. The Priority works very good, up to 10 channels can be selected, one in each of the 10 first banks. The pause for checking the activity on one channels is above average and nearly not noticable on some bands (differs on the step between the priority-freq and the current freq). The count-feature keeps track of the number of transmission that have occured on each channel, it counts up to 99 and are reseted manually or what you simply put the power off. It works 100% and i find it VERY usable in some cases. The tape-control feature allows you to connect a cassette-deck with a such feature. You can select whatever channels you wish recorded, works good and is pretty usable. Closing words First of all i will update this review with more as i write it. I've covered most of the aspects but not all, so more will come ;) The question all ask are "Would you recommend the Ubc9000xlt?" Well if you wont listen to much too LO VHF or aint got too many strong radio-stations and pager-transmitters in your area go ahead. The intermod-problem differ from place to place as well, maybe it'll work GREAT on your place, and the scanner IS a GOOD CHOICE ignoring the intermod-problem. I do own one at the moment but if a filter wont fix the intermod-problem i will probably change it to something else, even duh i love the features and speed of the scanner that can't be found somewhere else on this price-level.