samedi 13 septembre 2014

WS-1080 vs BCD-436HP in Los Angeles Day 1

Received the WS-1080 from Ham Station yesterday (Thanks Jeff for great service).

I will preface this by saying I never owned the PSR-800, so it is going to take me a while to get up to speed with the software.

That said, "You must be kidding me, some people think the PSR-800 (now the WS-1080) is better than the 436HP. Well we must be on a different planet. Because I sure don't. Granted it is only day 1 and I need to learn the radio. But already the screen is scratched. Had it out less than 4 hours, and the screen is scratched.

Then, sometimes the speaker would not come on when had the USB cable plugged into it to use it without the batteries. That seemed to resolve after a while, but have no idea why. Why did I use the USB cable after a couple of hours? Because I could watch the battery indicator going down as I used the scanner. I mean pretty fast.

To be fair, the P25 audio quality sounds a bit more natural on the WS-1080, but not by much. Whereas the P25 decode, in my opinion, is better on the 436HP. This seemed true both on the LAPD conventional P25 and ICIS P25 trunk system.

The big deal for me is the flexibility of the 436HP/536HP to do things on the fly. Maybe I am just used to the Favorite List/Sentinel program now, but I find that very flexible. With no keys to really do anything on the WS-1080, I feel lost.

Yes, the VHF was a bit better on the WS-1080, but not by much. And the 436HP has the nice big display. With the WS-1080, its pretty much the old smaller display. Maybe I am different, but besides hearing the channels and TGs, I like to see lots of information about them.

Again to be fair, I want to give it a couple of weeks with good comparisons between the WS-1080 and 436HP. But something tells me early on (kind of like when I met girls way back in the 1970s - now married 38 years) that the 436HP/536HP are going to continue to be my workhorse scanners.

In fact, I told Jeff at Ham Station to put me on the list for a 1095, but if it is basically the same as the 1080, I probably will forget it.

I realize that I am comparing the PSR-800 to the 436HP, and for me, at least on day 1, it is hands down the 436HP for me in Los Angeles in terms of on the fly flexibility to narrow down what I want to hear from literally thousands of stations. But I may change my mind after a week or two when I get used to EZ scan. Again, however, the inability to use third party software like Butel, ProScan, or Win-500 with the PSR-800/WS1080 is a big negative for me.

Steve AA6IO

Steve AA6IO




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