I had seen the Uniden BC 250D scanner before and decided that I didn't like the look of it. It was all too big for my enchanted and looked as if he wasn't able to take most of the chain like he fell to the floor. I did, however, hear that it was basically a Uniden 780, but in my hand holding. K 780 at this time my favorite scanner so 250 could not be all bad ... Could it have?

I'm the one that likes good looks and at 250 I wasn't much to look at, so I never paid much attention to it. However, when Uniden leaves the European model in the have of the UBC 3300 xlt (I assume U is for European?) All step sizes we use here in the UK and Europe as 6.25 kHz increments, which is incidentally a bit of one to deploy at 780 because it doesn't have 6.25 kHz increments. I started to get some notice. and when Jonathan Clough of Javiation offered me one for a review I was quite happy to accept it.

First impressions

After opening the box and looking at the 3300 stood on my desk I was still of the opinion that it was big and ugly. I compared myself to the size of the house and I didn't get a lot of changes back from the bricks. The top of the unit is on/off/smoud volume control and in the same place you smedate sitting under control on/off/volume switch. The first thing I thought it could be easily broken down was a bad tap. in the middle is on hearing aids 3.5 mm jack for normal work we began to expect. and on the left side, which is the BNC connector for mounting one antenna. Moving in the top half of the face we have a silver/chrome metal speaker grill. It's a different prepo think. Do I like it? No, no. Under this we have a space between the speakers and the display with the word "Uniden" and beyond that we have the main LCD display.

In my opinion there could be a smaller gap between the grill and the display, filled with a larger display. After all, if we have a large scanner then at least give us a decent display size. Under this we have different function buttons / rotary wheel etc. yet it's not very good to look at the 3300. But I wanted to see if it really was as good as the 780 wise performance. Another check unit and I found it didn't look as weak as I first thought, in fact I probably could have knocked. Looking at the status and friends of 250 says they definitely can have knocks.

The Uniden UBC 3300 comes with ten search banks that should be sufficient for most residents needs. You can be set up with any search range, step size or mode like AM, FM, or NFM WFM. Alpha also tagging is a feature that can be used with search banks (or how Uniden moves to call).

As with the 780 that you have a car storage feature that when searching for banks, 3300 drops to the new found frequency into the bank memory of your choice. New frequencies will only be found in writing to remember once it is very gratifying that unlike some scanners they repeatedly drop the same frequency into a new memory slot over and over again. I find with any scanner when using this feature to do a couple of manual searches before the side locking any unwanted crude that peeks around in the inside of the scanner that allows you to lock it into the air. With that make car store feature everything went quietly and a lot of the time I completely forgot why my scanner had gone silent. I think they would have liked a little audio of themselves, but the thinking from uniden was probably people I would perhaps go out and let him look and all the audio is a waste of time and battery life. But having said that, there is a "mute" played on this radio.

When there is no car storage you may want to change the direction of the search, it is optional by using a small swivel wheel on top of the keyboard. I found this gratifying, saying it can be done with a 780, but I never figured out how to do it, with its 3300 one wind. To watch active find new frequencies just need the "Hold" button. From here, you can decide whether to save the frequency to memory. I was here to find a feature I didn't like. 3300 will save on the first available memory ch given that the 780 would have saved the channel I selected. With the 3300 you will need to eat the orange rotary wheel to the desired memory slot. Another hitch was when I found in search mode I couldn't find an easy way to go back to manual mode and hold the button are one and the same.

Lockout

While in search mode up to 200 frequencies can be locked to search ranges. As with the 780 recovery locked frequencies is a simple matter of pressing down the L/O button for 2 seconds. Simple and effective, great!

Programming

Typical Uniden scanners programming was a cinch. Tap on frequencies and enter. Simple as that! Entering text tags for all channels and banks is also a similar matter very easy to do. CTCSS / DCS? Set it to search and when you found the tone in traffic press enter and that it is saved! Or, you can manually select a tone to use. Why can't other scanners make this bloody easy? It wont recruit brain doctors to operate this scanner. Rotary wheel on the front of the scanner for easy navigation in connection with various functions. For more easy programming BUTEL offer arc 250 software that is now compatible for use with 3300.

One complaint I mention about the scanner to be for the home market. I was constantly having to reset the tuning steps. For example, I could type 165.1625 and 165.160 would get in memory because it was defaulting to 10 kHz increments. So I'd set it at 12.5 kHz. I spoke to one bc250 owner (US version is 3300) and said they'd like to buy 3300 because of that reason. My advice? Save your money this still occurs with 3300.

One way around this is to set the radio on the band's Schedule 2. It comes from default to band plan 1. to 3300 then default 80-87.4875 fm and138-174 Mhz 12.5 KHz steps. But even if it will fix the VHF 12.5KHz problem other frequency bands will continue unchanged. For example, Band 3 trunked frequencies will default to 50KHz WFM.

Also the military airband will default to 50 kHz when the international standard is 25 kHz.

The feature that I love and you will appreciate with the 1000 ch scanner is that you try to enter duplicate frequencies into memory at 3300 will warn you a message like "Duplicate 222" so you know that these frequencies already in Chap 222 Wicked! I have this feature on my 780 so I know how useful it is. This will save you filling the memory bank with duplicate frequencies. Once this warning will then have two options, press Enter again and the frequency will be saved in memory, regardless or are not to enter the frequency.

In operation

OK now to do much and enter your favorite frequencies into memory locations. By the way, having 1,000 ch versus me 780 to 500 allows for better bank allocation planning. Definitely more versatile though you only use it on 500 ferrets.

Used as in most of my previous reviews I used watson W-889 telescopic antennas.

Within seconds of entering a few frequencies I was very impressed. I tapped in my local fire frequency at 70Mhz now not many scanners do well here, and in all fairness is a very bad signal, I heard the engine fire with its radio blaring getting a very broken signal so what should have a chance with the scanner when the radio built for this band, with the aerial cut for that frequency and still fighting to stop in the signals? Even the 3300 brought signals of a thriving thumb I was well impressed with. Unfortunately it was short lived as soon as I pull out the mains charger signal was not heard and is only heard from good Vantage points or if and about in the car then when in a better location. This is not really a criticism of the 3300 you see some scanners better signal when it is powered from the network. In all fairness, the results on this band are matched with 780. The fire station at 70 Mhz about 40-50 miles has been heard from time to time which is very good because there is little heard of other scanners.

Moving to 30 MHz I found the 3300 handle very well, even with signals coming from a very reasonable distance. And a later comparison check against the 780 shows that 3,300 isn't quite as good as the 780 for income in the area.

VHF airband

Using my usual test point (My Bedroom Window) I found giving reasonable results of 3300 to 119,250 MHz. Ground side with interviews heard it but pure sound.

Birmingham Airport comm's were again audible, but not the best signals I encountered. It wasn't as good as the Icome R20, which delivered brilliant reflections on the field, but on par with a 780.

Moving to vhf 162-170 MHz PMR gave good results, some scanners match here but not 3300.

177-185 Mhz Fleetcomm frequencies could be heard loud and clear from a neighboring town 20 kilometers and beyond.

Again, the UHF 440-463 MHz PMR gave really very good results with Birmingham Airport's 455,475 road roads this is one example of getting fined loud and clear from its location. I can't be 100% sure, but I don't think my 780 came alive from the same location. (Later checks compared to both scanners by the side will show my last comment to be true with frequency, although weak easy to hear at 3300, but kept quiet about the remaining 780) said that with my 780 scans one repeater at 443MHz loud and clear of the city 30 kilometers behind a certain location in the house, but the 3300 was a little uncertain from the same location.

Pager interference

One test I wanted to run was to drive past strengths while the pager tuned to 152Mhz ch. The Pages I Go Past usually flattens no signal they have received, but with 3300 I found that they managed to fight it back and remained audible. There was no interference or pager breakthrough heard about all but one 152MHz frequency from which the pager could be heard up to miles away from the broadcast site. Strange that a good pager rejection all but is