Uniden Bearcat BC125AT Handheld Scanner, 500-Alpha-Tagged Channels, Close Call Technology, PC Programable, Aviation, Marine, Railroad, NASCAR, Racing, and Non-Digital Police/Fire/Public Safety.

Ignore all those it’s too difficult to operate reviews... it’s down right simple! I’m mildly dyslexic when it comes to number punching. People who have previously complained, more than likely have problems putting in batteries or swapping out light bulbs, or boiling an egg! This scanner is ridiculously simple to use. Just watch some YouTube videos to get you started, and learn the sub menus and functions keys and by the next day or two, I promise you will be whizzing around the scanner like an expert! Anything new is daunting at first, like a new car, couple of spins around the block, you will remember which lever is your indicators and which lever operates your screen wipers! The more you fiddle with it, the better you become accustomed! This is a must buy analogue scanner. Works absolutely perfectly with the free “scan125” software. The software controls the scanner via your laptop or PC, with the usb cable supplied with your purchase! Your can even power off the Bearcat BC125AT within “scan125” program, it’s that powerful! Search “Nick Bailey Uniden scan125. I cannot stress enough to get this free software, which is HIGHLY recommended for your Bearcat BC125AT. Get it! Get it! Get it! The BC125AT scanner locks on better than my whistler 1010. The Close Call feature is powerful and has found more frequencies than my WS1010 ever did! So to those good folk who sent back their BC125AT, it’s very unfortunate you never spent time viewing those YouTube videos explaining this fastest seller! Otherwise you would be enjoying it as much as I am right now! Don’t hesitate... get it now! For the price, it’s worth it! Otherwise go for the more expensive digital brands. More time will be required learning the many sub menus of those high end scanners! I am very chuffed and delighted with my purchase from Amazon USA.

UPDATE - 8/3/2020: If you buy a Newer Unit, DO NOT TRY TO DOWNLOAD THE FIRMWARE FROM THE UNIDEN WEBSITE, as it will reload an older version, if you have a Newly purchased Unit. Their Support Documentation, and every YouTube Video I looked at, directs you to the Uniden BC125AT Website/Webpage, which is outdated, and has at least one bad link (for the Driver downloads). I repeat DO NOT Download the Firmware update, if you have a version at or higher than 1.03.01. I know there at least Two firmware updates, after the download on their support page for the BC125AT. The documentation on their webpage does not tell you which firmware you are downloading, and after you update, there is no way to reload the previous (more current version) that you had, as I found no links to newer versions on Unidens website. or on the web. You can verify the firmware version on the unit that you have, when you power it on. This is absolutely POOR documentation and product support! The only reason I am not giving it a One Star, is that the programming software (which you should download) is a nice tool to be able to modify and save files, to load your on BC125AT. However, the process of spending a whole day (for someone who is not well versed in scanners) is tedious and time consuming, since the majority of info out there is outdated. This unit is fine for monitoring what I am looking to use it for (Analog Civil/Military Air Traffic), but I would not buy it for monitoring LEO/Police frequencies, as most are using Digital in the 800-900 mhz range. I would not buy this unit, if I had to do it again, being a newbie radio/scanner operator, because of the inaccurate and lack of support information available. It is probably fine for someone who has an extensive background in HAM or Scanning, however. All that said, I stand by my Original Review... ORIGINAL REVIEW: Not really happy with the information available on how to set-up this unit, even from the Manufacturers Webpage/Website and Unidens YouTube Videos, as both places need to be updated with current information. But they sure have no problems encouraging you to PAY for them to program it for you, which is Great for bottom line profits, but CRAPPY for customer service for the product, which is why this product is getting a poor review from this customer. Sure I could spend several hours reading the manual, and eventually I will, but I wanted to get some things programmed immediately, and expected their to be current information on the Web, but obviously my expectations werent met.

Bought for 86$. The scanner works fine but the interface is way too complicated from a fresh start. After many youtube videos, I was able to set up my channels and tune my banks the way I want. Have JFK, LGA, NYPD, and some military channels on separate banks and can scan what I want. I get about 10-15 miles range from aircraft that are IN THE AIR, and rarely on the ground at airports that are in the same range. Can listen to NYPD from over 15 miles away so thats cool. I wish I could listen to airport transmissions that happened on the ground like the Tower and planes on the ground with the standard antenna. Probably need a larger antenna for that though. Also, I wish I could charge and listen at the same time, i don’t think it can do that.

I am disappointed with this purchase mainly due to the cost of it. It does work pretty well. Most reviewers of this device that gave it 1 star spoke of problems they had with the device and most of their problems was a result of not reading the user manual. Such as the All Channels Locked Out! warning that came up on one user. Scanning channels requires you to first save a frequency on the device then it will scan saved frequencies. There is a Search button that will search every individual frequency right out the box. Super easy to use and much faster at scanning than my Baofeng F8HP is. You can even choose if you only want certain bands scanned or all of them if you want to. If you hit Function then Search it will do a service search which means it will scan known police, fire/ems, Civ air, military air, ham only bands, and even walkie talkie and CB radio frequencies. FRS/MURS/GMRS. I was able to find a nearby construction site while scanning the FRS bank. It was the 2 people that have hold the Stop and Slow signs to direct traffic. I drove past them to test the Close Call feature and it couldnt pick up their signal as I drove past them while they were visibly talking on the walkie talkie. If I just scan FRS frequencies it will find it very quickly, but the Close Call doesnt find it so fast it needs a much stronger signal to find it. The nice thing about this scanner is it also tells you any tones it detects. So if a walkie talkie is on Channel 2 and Sub-channel 1 it would show a tone of 67Hz. Nifty for repeaters too. The Close Call feature was not as good as I hoped it would be. It hardly picked up any signal. It must be a very close range option. I was hoping it would scan and find any frequency that you can listen to. I could scan frequencies and find various conversations, but with Close Call it would only find really really close signals or a lot of interfering strong signals. Close call was one of the main reasons I bought this. I never bothered programming channels into it, but I know it would be tedious. It could be useful depending on what your needs are, but for me as just a hobbyist it isnt worth it. I compared its receiving ability side by side with my Baofeng F8HP and my Baofeng could hear a handful more signals than the Uniden could. this tells me the Uniden is probably scanning over frequencies without seeing a signal. It probably isnt the device itself, but likely just the antenna. Im sure with a good antenna like maybe a discone antenna would help you find a lot more signals. I tried searching HF signals with this device and I could not find one. I live 30 minutes south of Salt Lake City and the Salt Lake Valley here has around 2 million people so I would assume there should be some HF signals out here. This device is probably a lot more useful in bigger cities like Chicago or New York. I did find a conversation on every other band including civilian and military air. t wish the features of this device could be built into a HAM radio without increasing its size. This thing is kind of chunky its much bigger than most HAM handhelds are, so isnt super convenient to carry, but I really dont see anything better an smaller on the market. I thought it would be nice in the backcountry to find signals in case you needed to contact someone to relay for help. It still might be nice for that, but I dont know for sure. I did however find a better stationary scanning option recently called Software Defined Radio (SDR) Here on amazon there is a USB device called the RTL-SDR for $17. It turns your computer into a radio receiver. It lets software do the work of analyzing vs the bulky and expensive hardware would you have to buy otherwise. It doesnt come with an antenna. It needs an SMA Female antenna to work with it. My dads rubber duckie ICOM antenna worked fine. I got the device set up from their website Quick Start Guide in less than 10 minutes and I was able to visually see radio frequencies and signals. It was super easy to tune to any frequency I wanted and easy to see where the spikes were on the software it was either interference or a signal. I quickly found a lot of HAM, Police, and Fire conversations as well as local FM radio. You need the right antenna to listen to HF frequencies though which I plan on getting since this device was so cheap and easy to use. I could listen to anything from 87Mhz-900Mhz with this USB device so far. It is capable of listening up to 18Ghz. Of course nothing really goes up that high, but you can even analyze wifi signals with it. Lots of fun! For a hobbyist that is definitely the more fun and affordable option. If you needed to make it portable then just get a small laptop for it.

Bought this handheld scanner for my Dad on May 9, 2021. He is a Past Chief of our Fire Dept. and still enjoys listening to what’s going on. He noticed it wouldn’t charge and opened the battery compartment to find the rechargeable batteries from 2010 ( ELEVEN YEARS AGO) had deteriorated and melted the inner compartment. He cannot switch it over from rechargeable to AA batteries because the old rechargeables melted the switch and contacts. Very disappointed. I had not realized this handheld was released 2011. I never would have purchased such an OLD product!!! Now to see if the original retail warranty applies to me or the radio company that is selling these. I will update this review once I find out what course of action I have. We missed the Amazon return date because we lost my Mom recently and our minds were not on this scanner.

Works well but user interface is not logical. Old type of NiMH batteries. LCD backlight uses old fashioned power consuming LEDs.

This scanner is inexpensive for what it does. I purchased the scanner only to monitor ATC and other aircraft since I am a SUAS pilot. It works for what it need it for. The charging is a bit slow, but not a huge obstacle for me.

Bought this for the car to go along with my ham radio hand-held. This is a great little scanner for the money. Very easy to program with a PC and great battery life. It comes with rechargeable batteries, but like other scanners, the antenna has lousy gain, so plan on getting something better. I dont care about P25 or other digital modes, so that was not a problem for me. The keypad is very easy to use and once you know the layout you can easily operate it in the dark, while driving with one hand. Audio is plenty loud. It has an extra feature that is always scanning for near field transmissions, just in case you are wondering if there is a hidden transmitter close by. :-)

From Pittsburgh PA I can hear transmissions as far away as Interstate 80!!! And this area is full of hills and valleys, but this little radio was still able to pull those signals in. Scanning through the channels I hear a whole new world of conversations I didnt even know existed. I especially like the ability to scan for strong transmissions close by. It locks on and lets you know what is in your area. This feature can be turned off so that you can just run up and down a frequency range without being interrupted by strong signals you would rather ignore. A bunch of namable programmable channels means I wont lose interesting signals I may find while roaming through the hundreds of frequencies. A word of warning to you guys who like to just pick up a new toy and run with it... Read the manual!!! It will save you time and frustration! Once I understood the way Uniden had their menu scheme laid out, working with this radio was easy. This is my first real professional scanner and it took me a little bit of time to understand what I had purchased. But once I got the hang of it, I didnt want to put it down! Im still learning all the features, (havent tried to connect it to my computer yet), and can hardly wait to take it out to a sporting event. I know it is almost trivial, but the detachable antenna makes for easy travel. That was a nice touch. I can put it in my pocket with no worries about breakage. Uniden packed a lot of good things in this little radio for a fair price. I’m very happy with this purchase.

I was reluctant to purchase this scanner because I owned one of the first that was produced. The first one I owned was not very good. Poor reception and was subject to power line bleed over and numerous other problems. The Uniden BC125AT is a wonderful scanner. Programing from the scanner itself is somewhat of a pain and takes a lot of time. If you purchase this scanner download the programing software. It is very easy to use and will save you a ton of time. Reception is very good with no powerline bleed over.