| WNHY |
Rating:      |
2013-11-25 | |
| still ticking along |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
Update; I sent my PRO-95 over the hill to the old folks home..for real. I set it up for my mother-in-law who just moved into a senior citizens apartment. It was still going first rate in my RIDGELINE, but I just thought it was time to put it into a easier inviroment, where it wouldn't be subject to extreme temperature changes. I still rate it a 5. Loud audio is not distorted, a + for a senior citizen.
Replaced it with a PRO-97 which has a little bigger display and seems to have a little louder audio which is needed in my RIDGELINE. |
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| IRISHSOUL |
Rating:  |
2005-07-15 | |
| Bad choice |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
I got this scanner in dec. 04. Since then ive had no luck in making this thing work with trunking. I live in worcester,ma. an they use edacs an the state police uses mot. my old pro-94 works 100%. An i thought newer is better HA! Not happy with it! Im going to sell it soon.....
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Earlier 2-star review posted by IRISHSOUL on 2004-12-27
I had the scanner programed at radio shack. When i got home i start scannin. The worcester pd. (Ed. mode) comes on. It sounds like ther underwater wtf. My Pro-94 and easier to use an is loud an clear. Thers a few other goofy things but i'll deal with it..Maybe? |
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| N9YNG |
Rating:     |
2005-07-06 | |
| Doesn't knock your socks off... |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
This is a pretty decent scanner for most purposes. The trunking feature works well, and you can assign a 12 character alpha numeric tag to the various talk groups. Actually, you can assign a tag to any frequency you enter.
Also, the scanner seems to be pretty well constructed, as my XYL "accidently" dropped the Pro-95 and his friend, Yaesu Ft-470, down an uncarpeted flight of stairs. The PRO-95 passed that test well. Rest in pieces, Mr. 470....
What keeps it from being a 5:
1) Although the scanner can receive NOAA WX alerts, you can program only ONE NOAA WX radio freq into the (one and only) priority channel so you can receive the alerts while scanning other frequencies. Unless I'm missing something very obvious, this seems to be a problem if you're going to be travelling into and out of the range of that particular frequency. So, if you're a Skywarn spotter with a large territory, be advised...
2) Although the scanner CAN receive Mil Air frequencies, you need the programming cable and software to make this happen.
3) CTCSS capibility would be nice.
4) Would have been nice to autosave frequencies or talkgroups, but now I'm being unreasonable.
I got mine on sale for around $129.00, but I havent seen it that cheap since. |
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| N7HO |
Rating:      |
2005-01-14 | |
| I Love It! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
This is the best scanner I've owned. I love the features. Love the Alpha-tags, makes it easy to keep track of everything. I use Ni-MH batteries in it which work great. Programming was easy using the free Win95 software I downloaded. To be fair, there is no Trunking in my area, so I can't comment on that feature, but everything else is great. This thing makes my other scanners seem so obsolete. What can I say? I love this scanner, and I'd buy another one in a second. I only wish they made a mobile version.
73,
Steve / N7HO |
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| KG0WX |
Rating:     |
2005-01-03 | |
| No Bearcat, but also a lot less $$$! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I used to own a BC780XLT, a BC895XLT and a Pro-94A. The Bearcats were the best for operations flexibility but the PRO-95 does what I need. I got mine on sale for $129.95. I took it home and tried reading the instructions. Nuts. Whoever wrote the manual should be put on a pedistal in a crowded stadium and shot through the %#^$@# head.
After I got my local MII system programmed, I started scanning. A chase started on one channel so I hit "manual" to stop the scan and stay on that talkgroup. Did the scanner do that? Nooooo - it left trunking mode and gave me the control channel's screech. Bleh!
That's when I read the whole terrible manual several times, looking for the right keystroke to hold a talk group. Nothing. I finally did a web search and found the Yahoo! Egroup for the pro 93 & 95
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PRO-93_95
and they had a link to a help page. I found you have to press and hold the trunk button *while recieving* to stop on a talkgroup.
The alpha tags are nice and also you get to display BOTH alpha tags & the frequency - a rarity on modern radios, most make you choose between either tags or freqs. Nuts again.
Reciever performance is good to excellent but when I tried an external antenna (Hustler CG-144 @ 42') on airband freqs, I had to use the attenuator. I guess that's how it should be. HF performance seems quite good given the rubber antenna's shortcomings.
As to the previous poster's comments about the radio lacking 220 - What? Mine does 220 just fine.
I programmed all of the radio without the PC cable, including some 300 alpha tags. Whew! Got the cable today and backed up all that hard work. The software (Win95) allows you to do a few things you can't with the keypad, like assigning alpha tags to the 10 regular storage banks & such.
I took the nicad's (1,000 mah) out of my Pro-94A to run this radio. Funny, even with lots of use and backlight almost always on, I get about 3x the run time with these batteries as compared to when they were in my '94. Dunno what's up with that.
Overall, Great scanner with quirks and a P.O.S. manual. Fear not - you can get help online for the manual and I'm getting used to the few quirks there are.
Ken KG0WX |
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| W4KYR |
Rating:     |
2004-12-27 | |
| OK , aint worth $150 |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
At $150 this scanner gets a 4 , if it was $100 or less, it would earn a 5. The instruction booklet is the absolutely worst I have seen from radio shack. The booklet gets a 0
Pages 56-59 tell you how simple it is to program in trunk mode. I followed their instructions to letter and heard absolutely nothing for hours in scan trunking.
Put it in manual one channel at a time and I heard communications and the control channel.
Only if you read on you will understand that you must know if the system is EDACS, MO 1 , MO2.
Pages 56-59 contradict the other pages, on how to program and scan in trunk... just great for newbies!
The online databases are not much better than the RS instruction booklet. You must know in advance if the system you want to monitor is either EDACS, MO2, or MO1. If your data base doesn't mention what mode it is, you are on your own.
So this also means if you have type 1 Motorola, you must do a also do fleet map. Yet on pages 56-59, nothing is mentioned about it.
Save your money, get a PRO-96 if trunking is that important to you. ( I do not own that radio and will not until it comes down to $300)
Other minuses
No 220 mhz coverage
No Wide FM Coverage
No Am Broadcast
No multimode
No programming cable
Other than being 1000 channels and having some trunking capability. I do not belive its worth $150 and certaintly not the $200 it was selling for. If you can get one used for $100 or less snap it up.
But just understand that you need to know what Mode it is before you go and program it into this radio, otherwise you will waste your time and think the radio is defective.
Too bad Radio Shack seems to be lacking in the common sense department when it comes to their instruction manuals.
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| KI4HWJ |
Rating:     |
2004-11-30 | |
| good begining scanner |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I have owned this scanner for I think 2 1\2 years. It is a very nice scanner although it has somethings that it needs help with. First of all, who ever was responsible for blocking tv audio and 200-300 Mhz was out of their friggen minds. On a lighter note, stick a telescopic whip on this thing and it works like a champ. Aircraft and ham band reception is very good. I made a 2 meter dipole for it and reception was amazing! I could even hear the control tower at fort campbell (which is about 30 miles away from me). I would highly recomend this scanner for a entry level scanner enthusiast.
73 |
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| N5LNL |
Rating:  |
2004-07-26 | |
| Aircraft Reception |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| I Love the Pro-95, however, I am really disappointed that this radio is Lousy at AM Aircraft Reception, I set the Pro-95 and Pro-94 on the same Freq. Used by Houston Center and the Pro-95 never heard it once, the Pro-94 did, Loud and Clear, so, Im wondering why Radio Shack made this kind of error. |
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| ZULU-BRAVO |
Rating:    |
2004-07-26 | |
| Pretty Good first scanner |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Paid $199, probably should have gotten it on sale. Oh well. I really like it anyway. That being said, I do have a few suggestions for Radio Shack...
1. Backlit keypad, backlit keypad, backlit keypad.
2. Rugged design. (What's with the plasti-mart belt clip?)
3. Include computer cable. Everybody gets one anyway.
4. 4-line display
5. Don't block 54-108, 174-216, 225-406, 512-806, or 960-1240MHz! These frequencies include FM radio and television audio. Whose idea was that?!
6. Finer control on the squelch.
7. Better manual. At least give diagrams of the display and a list of function codes. The manual could use A LOT of improvement.
8. Bigger frequency range, maybe 100Khz-3Ghz? Well, at least the lower end? Probably quad superhet... (like the Yaesu VR-500)
9. Indiglo or tricolor backlight? Pretty please. :)
10. SSB (USB, LSB)
11. Simple spectrum analyzer and frequency counter. Maybe flashtune :) Kinda like Alinco DJ-X2000. Maybe that's asking too much.
12. Clock
Thanks for reading. |
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| JC92083 |
Rating:      |
2004-04-22 | |
| antenna |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
| i love this radio shack pro 95 scanner my only problem is that i need an antenna for outside because in my appartment it dont get that good of reception. what type do you sugest . email me at jc92083@optonline.net and put pro 95 antenna in subject so i know what it is and dont erase the email. thanks |
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