Uniden BC355N 300-Channel Base/Mobile Scanner, Close Call Capture, Pre-programmed Search Bands, NOAA Weather, Aviation, Marine, Railroad, NASCAR, and 'Non-digital' emergency services

I got this scanner to listen to the local emergency channels as well as the storm spotter stations. It is always nice to know what is going on in the area as I am a first responder. There are days I like to follow big fires as some times we are called in for mutual aid, so it gives me a good snap shot of what to expect if a MABAS is called. I do believe that the location for this is good to note as well. I live in a semi rural area surrounded by a lot of forestry land and bluffs, my scanner is by my desk in the basement with just the basic pull out antenna attached. So far it has had no issues getting very good signal, even in snow, rain, heavy winds, and summertime tree cover. Some days I actually hear the calls paging us for a fire on the scanner before my actual pager picks up the page and sounds off. The programming is not hard, I had absolutely no issues getting the local frequencies programmed into the private selection. The little instruction booklet that came with it was pretty fairly easy to comprehend when it came to setting frequencies into the private section, not really sure why this particular function had so many negative reviews about it being confusing. This is my first scanner and from unboxing to being up and running with all the local frequencies installed it took maybe an hour, this includes assembly, running the cord, attaching the antenna and looking up and saving the 15 or so local frequencies. It comes with the power and antenna capabilities to use in the house or while on the road. It is pretty nice using it on long road trips to hear about what is going on in front of you. The weather channels are nice too as you can follow the weather alerts from the NWS in real time. We get frequent tornadic weather, so this is nice to have in the basement to have a decent heads up in the event of natural disasters. Overall I am pleased, my kids love to listen in when we get a fire call, it gives me the alerts that I want. It is pretty easy to operate. If you are looking for a basic analog (not digital) scanner. It has ran daily since I got it and I have not had any issues at all. If I had to throw a negative in there, it would be a stretch with saying the sound gets a bit crackly for a few seconds, but then I have to remember where it is and it is pulling in analog. I would recommend this to anyone who is looking for a basic scanner.

Received In brand new perfect condition. Extremely well packaged thank you. I’m very impressed with this scanner. My eyes couldn’t believe what all comes with this little jewel. Comes with two different antennas, ac power cord and a dc power cable , nice flip stand which you can remove if you like rubber feet instead. Nice little owners manual. The scanner works great. Had it up and running in a few minutes. Love the presets and this little giant doesn’t take up much real estate. Great analog scanner. I’m probably going to buy one of there digital scanners in the future. Just haven’t made up my mind yet on one. I like the model that uses your zip code for programming. I highly recommend the one I just bought.

This unit is versatile in that it is easily moved from a desktop "installation" to a vehicle "installation" - and it is ALMOST a "portable" unit except that it needs an external power connection. It is small and light enough to be moved about easily, and compact enough to fit in many "cubby holes". Unlike some mobile units, it's exterior is "clean" enough to look fine sitting out in the open on a desktop, yet it can be quickly/easily attached to a (pre-installed) mount in a vehicle, although it does require manual attachment of the power and antenna cables. Of course, the mobile mounting bracket could be used instead to mount the unit, say, under a shelf or whatever. Functionally, it works well in most respects. I was a little surprised that it seems to be a bit less sensitive than the old crystal-controlled scanner that it replaced. The backlit display is readable under most lighting conditions, but some indicators would seem quite small for quick reading in a mobile installation - unless the unit can be located fairly close to the observer. Fortunately, it's not necessary to see them clearly during normal scanning mode. I haven't yet used my unit in a mobile installation, but I'm wondering if the buttons will be easy to see and access under poor lighting conditions. The buttons are small enough and spaced tightly enough that they might be difficult to use in a moving vehicle and/or with a gloved hand. Generally speaking, the unit is easy to use, but some of the functions don't seem to be intuitive - and so I often have to pull out the manual to do the operations that I use only rarely, in order to get all of the necessary steps in the correct sequence. The most tedious aspect is when manually programming (or removing) specific frequencies. While not particularly difficult, the process is time-consuming. It would help a lot if this unit had the ability to be programmed from a computer, because this likely would save a lot of time in the process. Meanwhile, programming frequencies by "capturing" actual transmissions is straight-forward, quick and easy - so long as the someone "cooperates" by transmitting on the desired channel when you want to "capture" it. I am still rather confused by how the "channel banks" interact with each other - and how to configure them properly. But, I've been able to get the unit set up to do almost all that I need it to do. (The missing piece is that I don't know how to access the PL channels that are used in this area). The unit does retain its programming when power is removed - although I haven't confirmed this over the long-term. The only problem I've run into is being unable to find any specifications for the necessary impedance of the external speaker, and wasn't even able to find out from Tech Support. This isa rather concerning. Hopefully, they will be more helpful if there are any other support needs. Overall, I do like this unit, and I feel it is a good value.

Up front: this is an older model, and does not receive digital transmissions. But with that being known ahead of time, this scanner is simply the best, easiest, and highly usable for my purposes. I wanted something that would be great for use in my travel trailer. I need to go to a new area and pick up whatever local stations are transmitting. I want to hear the cops and fire, but also ham radio repeaters, and aircraft from time to time. And it even gets CB which is something I might need too. The "close call" feature is great, as expected, for those times when there are mystery stations nearby such as the security guard in the RV park chasing someone, or hams at a hamfest QSYing where they think it's a private freq). Big features I like are a) programming searched out channels into a bank, b) storing my own favorite freqs into the "private" bank, no matter what the service (air, AND fire, AND ham 146.52, AND FRS, AND CB ch. 19 for example), and c) a pretty fast scan rate, and d) a very sensitive receiver. It's small, low power requirements, and can run on 12V or uses the 115 adapter. It also includes a couple of antennas, for flexibility where it is sitting on the bench at home, or in the car. You can "scan everything" and then cut out band-by-band that you don't want to monitor right now. One tradeoff is that there is no direct frequency entry mode, but that means there are 10 less buttons on the front panel, and for a small radio like this, that is really a plus, not a minus. Ultimately, "would I buy another one if this one was broken or stolen or I gave it away?" Absolutely. It's exactly what I wanted when I bought it, and I'm 100% happy with everything about it (including Amazon's price, as usual). If you're thinking of getting this as a gift for someone, check first to see if their local services use digital radios. This varies all over the country.

Were still trying to find a Spot it will work. Can get it to make some noise. The instructions are so tiny my bi-folcals can't read. Were trouble shooting from the directions the company online says to do. My son and I are so upset, my husband has wanted a new one for so long and we finally get one that had good reviews and its still not working. Will not buy again.

I live in an area that still uses analog communications for emergency services, so I was looking for a simple scanner that I could program with a few banks. This scanner seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Unfortunately, it wasn't until I started to program it that I realized it's massive flaw. I honestly don't understand how the designers of this scanners firmware could be so completely incompetent in their design. The police/fire/emergency banks along with air and marine are completely unusable if you are near any amount of traffic at all. The scanner is reported as 3 x 100 bank programmable, where 1 bank is 'Private' 1 is 'Police/Fire/Emrg' and 1 is 'air/marine'. The issue is, the only way to scan programable banks for police/fire/emrg or air/marine is to enable the associated built in channels with those banks. There are almost 4000 channels that get scanned if you turn those on. Your programmable banks get scanned *after* those channels and at 100cps, that's a 20 second round trip. What's even worse than that, is the scanner only has the ability to lock out 100 of those 4000 channels, so if you are near a city of any size it will hang constantly on digital signals that you can't disable. So what does this mean? Well you can't use a lot of the scanner and setup becomes very tedious. Police and air banks add almost 2000 channels each to your scan. This is slow and with only 100 lockouts you will never be able to filter out the noise in a busy area. If you enable fire/emrg (without police) you add about 300 channels and marine (without air) only adds about 90 and these will allow you to enable the other two private banks. I recommend enabling these and locking out everything local in the pre programmed banks and then adding the channels you want scanned into private, fire, and marine. This gives you control to enable/disable banks with 300 channels total and you should only have about 350 preprogrammed channels to contend with ( hopefully your 100 lockout limit will make these listenable in your area) WX and CB bands are fixed, so you get what you expect there. I don't recommend this scanner at all and I really can't believe it was built this way. A simple setting to turn off pre-programmed banks would make things so much easier.

I wanted a scanner for a long time. I use to pull up radio reference and listen to the stream of my local police traffic but the quality was bad and unreliable. This scanner appealed to be because I wanted one like this style, not the portable radio looking ones, as well as the feature of being able to use it in the home and car. It took me a little while to figure out how to use it even with the instructions but after 10-20 minutes I had my local sheriffs dept. tuned in. I was so happy, the quality was 100x better than the internet stream, it sounded like they were right next to me compared to what the stream sounded like. I was impressed by the amount of accessories that were included with the scanner. Most companies would require you to purchase all the stuff that was included with this. There was a car antenna, a house antenna, AC adapter, DC adapter, and a hard wire kit for the car. I purchased a different antenna for the top of the car as well as a speaker. The only wish I have is that it went a little louder, when your in the car and driving at 60-75 MPH its hard to hear with the road noise. If you have it you can plus your AUX in for your car and have it come across your speakers but it'll only come out of one side. I don't know anything about scanners but I'm 100% happy with my purchase. Its something I've wanted for a long time and it does exactly what I wanted. Don't be discouraged if you have trouble figuring it out at first. The instructions don't cover everything so you sort of have to teach yourself some things.

Great scanner for the money as long as the agencies around you aren’t using trunked or digital frequencies. I would check the radio reference website to verify what is being used in your area. As for programming: Yeah it’s a bit tedious, but really no harder than setting stations on your fm stereo in your car. Just a heck of a lot more channels to sift through, lol. Check the internet for what frequencies are used by agencies around you. Again radio reference is a good source. Reception and sound: This is really dependent on your antenna and the signal strength of the broadcaster. The supplied antenna is ok for about 20 to 30 miles. If you’re looking to get further broadcasts I’d get a different one. Speaker quality is clear, good, and is quite loud. Again it is dependent on the signal. Broadcasts that are farther away are going to be more faint. I have not used the close capture technology, so I can’t speak to its effectiveness. Is this better than using mobile scanner apps? Heck yeah. With the mobile apps, you’re stuck to whatever frequencies they have programmed, or if there is even a broadcast for your area. Overall I’m very pleased with the scanner. I would recommend this to everyone looking for a great cheap little analog unit.

Recomiendo este Scanner, cumple su función.

Great scanner! I bought this specifically to monitor air band transmissions, because my daughter is working on her commercial pilot licence. If you plan on using it for air band you'll have to buy a decent external antenna. The antenna that comes with it isn't up to the task. I'm using an antenna specifically for air band 108Mhz - 136Mhz from "DPD Productions" which I mounted on my chimney. The internal speaker is pretty good, but I decided to buy a Cleartone MFJ-281 external speaker which is designed to work best in the frequency range of the human voice. One of my friends is an airline pilot and he was very impressed by how it performed.

muy bien, no es profesional, le falta potencia, pero por el precio esta muy bien, le falta claridad tiene a

Works well

La banda civil no tiene buena recepción y lo demás todo bien salvo el eliminador de corriente lo veo muy sencillo el cable de alimentación