Older Police Scanner | Scanner Master Blog

Years ago in the mid and late 1980’s police scanners were pretty tame by today’s standards. 20 channels was the norm, 50 channel scanners were top of the line. Most scanners did not cover 800 MHz, the displays were small and hard to view.

Radio Shack surprised the scanning world in 1987 when it introduced the revolutionary PRO-2004 scanner. Made by GRE (like most RS scanners at the time), it had 300 channels, totally unheard of at the time. People actually complained that there were too many channels available! Soon it was discovered that the memory could be easily expanded to allow 400 channels.

In addition the PRO-2004 had full coverage from 25-520 MHz. and 760-1300 MHz. This was also unheard of at the time. This was one of the first radios that covered the entire spectrum, including Military Air and more. Later versions of the PRO-2004 had the cellular bands removed from the radio.

The radio itself was pretty big and heavy. There was a lot of metal involved, the entire frame and case was made of steel, just the front panel was plastic. The metal case helped reduce outside interference sources. The radio soon developed a reputation for excellent sensitivity and image rejection and it was soon considered the top-of-the-heap scanner.

An entire cottage industry soon developed for modifications to the PRO-2004. It had plenty of room inside for additional boards and components. The radio had a diode matrix used to configure it for different areas and these uses were discovered in short order. Enterprising hobbyists created memory expansion cards. computer interfaces and data decoders to be installed to the radio.

The PRO-2004 spawned 2 successors, the PRO2005 and PRO2006. These were essentially identical to each other with minor updates to the 2006. The 2005/6 were identical in function and features to the 2004 but were in a smaller plastic case (although the interior case was steel).

Almost 30 years on and the PRO-2004/5/6 are still considered among the best scanners ever made. Many are still in daily use. The large channel capacity and wide coverage made them ideal for Military aircraft listening. While current scanners dwarf them in features and capacity the PRO-2004 made a tidal wave sized splash in the scanner hobby. Old-timers maintain fond memories of these scanners.

One of our favorite scanners of the past is the Bearcat 760XLT and its siblings. This was a desktop-mobile scanner family introduced in the late 1990’s. Built in a fairly small package, it fit almost anywhere.

This was one of a series of scanners in the same style case sold under the Bearcat, Regency and Cobra nameplates. Other models, like the BC950XLT, BC580XLT, BC590XLT and others shared the same case style. The 950 and 760 versions handle 800 MHz, the others do not. They were all analog-only and did not have trunktacking capabilities.

There were two optional boards for these radios. One was an internal pre-amp that could amplify the signal strength. While this was not available on the 760 and 950 versions (an 800 MHz. converter was installed in the same slot on these) an external preamp was available for these.

The most interesting thing with these scanners however was the introduction of a PL board. This was the first scanner to have the PL function, a revolutionary thing back in 1998! A pair of switches on the bottom of the radio under the bail controlled these options.

These scanners came in 2 generations. The first had an older style Motorola antenna jack and the newer ones changed to a BNC. The newer versions also allowed one to use the PL on some channels and not others while on the older ones the PL board was either on or off for the whole radio.

These radios were quite sensitive and were well known as great “Skip” receivers on low-band. They were also quite popular as the core of specialty devices like wireless mic receivers in mobile video systems, the radio portion of fire station alerting receivers and other uses due to the low cost, high sensitivity and a design that made it easy to adapt for these uses.

They were replaced by the famous BC780XLT but there are still many of these around.