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Uniden UBC 3300 XLT Trunking scanner
I had seen the Uniden BC 250D scanner before and decided that I did not like the look of it. It was far too big for my liking and looked like it would not be able to take much of a knock like being dropped on the floor. I did however hear that it was basically a Uniden 780 but in a hand held. The 780 is at this time my favourite scanner, so the 250 couldn't be all bad... could it? I am one that likes good looks and to me the 250 was not much of a looker, so I never paid much attention to it. However when Uniden brought out a european model in the guise of the Ubc 3300 xlt (I presume U is for european?) with all the step sizes we here in the UK and europe use such as 6.25 khz steps, which incidentally is a bit of a let down on the 780 as it does not have 6.25 khz steps. I started to take a bit of notice. and when Jonathan Clough from Javiation offered me one for review I was quite happy to accept. First impressions After opening up the box and looking at the 3300 standing on my desk I was still of the opinion that it was big and ugly. I compared it to the size of a house brick and I did not get much change back from the brick. The top of the unit has the on/off/volume and squelch control in the same location with squelch control sitting below the on/off/volume switch. The first thing I thought was this could be easily broken with a bad knock. in the middle is the earphone jack the normal 3.5mm job we have come to expect. and to the left of that is the BNC connector for fitting an aerial. Moving down the face the top half we have a silver/chrome metal speaker grill. It's different I suppose. Do I like it? No not really. Below this we have a space between the speaker and the display with the word "Uniden" and below that we have the main LCD display. In my opinion there could have been less of a gap between the grill and the display, being filled with a bigger display. After all if we are going to have a big scanner then at least give us a decent size display. Below this we have the various function buttons/rotary wheel etc. So far things don't look too good for the 3300. But I wanted to see if it really was as good as the 780 performance wise. Further inspection of the unit and I found it did not look as weak as I first thought, in fact I reckon it could take the knocks. Looking at the state of a friends 250 says it definitely can take the knocks.
The belt clip is something new to me it comes in the form of an alligator clip with a cradle which clips onto recesses in the sides of the scanner. In practice it has got to be one of the best clips I have ever used it clips on your belt or over the top of your trousers and easily slips off when you lift it.
The sides have rubber strips fitted to aid grip, again I found them very practical. on the right side (as you look at it) there is the remote clone/computer control slot which is fitted with a rubber covering which keeps the dirt out. However it does such a good job I found it hard work to open it up. Search The Uniden UBC 3300 comes with ten search banks which should be enough for most peoples needs. These can be set up with any search range, step size or mode such as am,fm,nfm or wfm. Also Alpha tagging is a feature that can be used with the search banks (Or ranges as Uniden call them). As with the 780 you have an auto store feature which when searching the search banks, the 3300 will drop the new found frequencies into a memory bank of your choosing. The new found frequencies will only be written to memory the once which is very pleasing, unlike some scanners that repeatedly drop the same frequency into a new memory slot time and again. I find with any scanner when using this feature to do a few manual searches before hand locking out any unwanted crud that lurks about in the insides of the scanner that makes it lock onto thin air. With that done the auto store feature is all done silently and many a time I completely forget why my scanner has gone quiet. I think I would have liked a bit of audio myself but the thinking from uniden was probably people would like to maybe go out and leave it searching and any audio is a waste of time and battery life. But having said that there is a "Mute" feature on this radio. When not auto storing you may want to change the direction of the searches, this is selectable by using the little rotary wheel at the top of the keypad. This I found pleasing, apparently this can be done with the 780 but I have never figured out how to do it, with the 3300 its a breeze. To monitor an active new found frequency you just press "Hold". From here you can decide if you want to save the frequency to memory. It was here I found a feature I did not like. The 3300 will save to the first available memory ch whereas the 780 would save onto the ch I had selected. With the 3300 you will have to roll the orange rotary wheel to the desired memory slot. Another snag I found was when in search mode I could not find an easy way to return to memory mode as the manual and hold button are one and the same. Lockout Whilst in search mode up to 200 frequencies can be locked out of the search ranges. As with the 780 restoring locked out frequencies is a simple matter of pressing and holding down the L/O button for 2 seconds. Simple and efficient, lovely! Programming Typical of Uniden scanners the programming was a cinch. Tap in the frequencies and enter. Simple as that! Entering text tags for channels and banks is also a similar affair very easy to do. Ctcss/Dcs? set it to search and when it has found the tone in use press enter and that's it stored! Or you can manually select the tone to use. Why can't other scanners be this bloody easy? It wont take a brain surgeon to operate this scanner. The rotary wheel on the front of the scanner made for easy navigation around the various functions. For further ease of programming Butel offer arc 250 software that is now compatible for use with the 3300. One gripe I have to mention for a scanner that is supposed to be for the home market. I was continuously having to reset the tuning steps. For instance I could type in 165.1625 and 165.160 would enter into memory because it was defaulting to 10 khz steps. So I would have to set to 12.5 Khz. I have spoke to one bc250 owner (The US version of the 3300) and he said he would like to purchase a 3300 because of this very reason. My advice? Save your money this still occurs with the 3300. One way around this is to set the radio to band plan 2. It comes defaulted to band plan 1. the 3300 will then default to 80-87.4875 fm and138-174 Mhz 12.5 Khz steps. However although this will fix the vhf 12.5KHz problem other frequency bands will still be unchanged. For instance Band 3 trunked frequencies will default to 50KHz wfm. Also Military airband will default to 50 KHz spacing when international standard is 25 Khz. A feature that I love and you will appreciate with a 1000 ch scanner is that you try to enter a duplicate frequency into memory the 3300 will warn you with a message like "Duplicate 222" so that you know that that frequency already exists in ch 222 Wicked! I have this feature on my 780 so I know how helpful it is. This saves you filling your memory banks with duplicate frequencies. Once given this warning you then have two options press enter again and the frequency will be stored into memory regardless, or not to enter the frequency. In Use OK now to power it up and enter my favourite frequencies into memory locations. Incidentally having 1000 ch as opposed to my 780's 500 makes for much better bank allocation planning. Definitely more versatile even if you do only use 500 freq's. As Used in most of my previous reviews I used the Watson W-889 telescopic aerial. Within seconds of entering a few frequencies I was very impressed. I tapped in the frequency of my local fire on 70MHz now not many scanners do well here, in all fairness it is a very bad signal I have heard a fire engine with his radio blaring getting a very broken signal so what chance should a scanner have when a radio built for that band, with an aerial cut for that frequency and still struggles to pull in the signals? Well the 3300 brought the signals booming in. I was well impressed. Unfortunately this was short lived, as soon as I pulled out the mains charger the signal was not heard, and is only heard from good vantage points or if out and about in the car then when in a better location. This is not really a criticism of the 3300 You see some scanners get a better signal when being powered from the mains. In all fairness it matched the results on this band with the 780. A Fire station on 70 Mhz about 40-50 miles was heard from time to time which is very good indeed as it is rarely heard on other scanners. Moving up to 30 MHz I found the 3300 to cope very well indeed with signals coming in from a very reasonable distance. A later comparison check against the 780 shows that the 3300 is not quite as good as the 780 for reception in this area. VHF airband Using
my usual test point (My Bedroom window) I found the 3300 gave reasonable
results on 119.250 mhz. Ground side of the conversations just being
heard but clear audio. Moving up into VHF PMR 162-170 MHz gave good results, some scanners struggle here but not the 3300. 177-185 Mhz Fleetcomm frequencies could be heard loud and clear from a neighbouring City 20 miles away and beyond. Up again into UHF PMR 440-463 MHz gave very good results indeed with Birmingham airport 455.475 ground comm's being one fine example received loud and clear from my location. I can't be 100% sure but I don't think my 780 has picked it up from the same location.(Later comparison checks with both scanners side by side proves my last comment to be true, with the frequency although weak being easily audible on the 3300 but remaining silent on the 780) Having said that my 780 picks up a repeater on 443MHz loud and clear from a town 30 miles away in a certain location in my house but the 3300 was a bit shaky from the same location. Pager interference One test I like to run is to drive past a strong pager site whilst tuned to a 152Mhz ch. The site I drive past usually flattens any signal being received, but with the 3300 I found it managed to fight it back and remained audible. There was no interference or pager breakthrough heard on all but one 152MHz frequency, of which the pager could be heard up to a mile away from the transmitting site. Strange that, good pager rejection throughout but one frequency giving the poorest results found yet. In all fairness in the whole the 3300 showed outstanding results and came through this test very well indeed. (Apparently these 153MHz pager sites are due to die a death before the end of the year! Good! I hope its slow and painful!). All VHF pmr frequencies appeared unaffected. Delay times One of the features I like about the 780 is the delay times that can be set for each channel. You can select, No delay so that as soon as the transmission finishes the scanner whizzes off to find the next active ch. A two second delay so that the scanner waits for two seconds for any replies, Four seconds same as the last but with an extra two seconds waiting time, Infinite, when a ch with this setting receives activity the scanner will hold onto it until you resume the scanning manually. Finally you can set it to resume scanning even when a transmission continuous after ten seconds. The last option I have found very useful when certain ch's can contain either boring or interesting transmissions. I have ten seconds to decide If I find it interesting and if I do I just press manual or hold. Imagine my dismay to find these options gone on the 3300! You have delay or no delay and that's it! 2 seconds is the only option also which I found a bit of a let down. Beep alert The beep alert can be set on a per ch basis alerting you that the interesting frequency is active. It works the same as the 780 in as much as three rapid high pitch beeps are heard, sort of like a shrill noise. I found this works extremely well. You try setting it on your favourite ch's and I can guarantee you your head will turn from whatever you are doing to look at the display. Trunking There are a couple of points I noticed that were different from the 780 and both I feel are for the better. When on and ID search and a new talkgroup is found the 3300 will display "NEW" this is most welcome to me because with the 780 I was forever filling memory allocations with duplicate talkgroup's. The minus side of the trunking is that there is no way visually of seeing if you are in trunked mode. With 780 "Trunk" is displayed. I found that sometimes with the 780 the first word is sometimes clipped however, I did not notice this lag with the 3300. The audio quality I found to be very good indeed. With the volume cranked right up the 3300 gave lovely loud clear audio with little if any distortion. This was a big bonus as I like to take my scanners with me everywhere and that includes the car which can be a noisy environment. Especially with the family in the car with kylie blasting out. The vhf am signals still in use in the UK came in lovely, loud and clear about the best I have encountered so far. Backlight The backlight on the 3300 does the job splendidly, in an orange hue that we have come to expect from Uniden I found it bright enough to see all that was going on and looking at the display in a dark environment with all the display and keypads lit up makes for a pretty site. Not only that but the light comes with two settings for brightness. Medium and High. The lower setting at night is more than ample but when out and about in my car I prefer the higher setting. This is another feature from the 780 which again is most pleasing to me. The ideal would be for the backlight to come on when a frequency becomes active. This is a feature of the Aor 8200 MK 3 and I loved it. I have been asking for this for some time. It is seen on amateur radio but for some reason scanner manufacturers have ignored the feature. This of course would need to come with the option of disabling as it would be a waste of battery power if powering on in daylight. Signal strength meter The signal stength meter is the same set up as the 780, a six segment job but it seems to work better than the 780's which would sometimes show a full strength signal even when reception was not that good. There is a mod to correct this in the 780 and it appears that Uniden have sorted this problem. Reverse button The 3300 Comes with a reverse button that is for all intents and purposes for monitoring a duplex conversation. i.e. you press this button and you can hear the transmission used in a split frequency set up. For instance you are monitoring your local police on one frequency, talk through is off so to monitor the other side of the conversation you press this button. Great! Trouble is there is no way of setting it up and it comes with a default setting god only knows for which country but its not for the UK so this feature is absolutely useless. The 780 is the same. This is a feature I have grown to use on other scanners so to find that it is of no use on the 3300 is very annoying, it would not be so bad if it did not come with the feature but to offer it and then make it useless is frustrating. This is one area that Uniden have fallen behind the competition. Priority As with the 780 the 3300 comes with a priority feature, whereas you can make any one ch in each bank as the priority ch .Making a total of ten priority ch's With each banks priority ch taking priority over the other priority ch's in ascending order. Confused? Ok you are in a scan and one of your priority ch's in bank 5 becomes active so the 3300 switches to that ch. Shortly after your priority ch in bank 4 becomes active so the 3300 will switch to that ch in precedence over the previous priority ch. I was pleased to see that when the 3300 sampled for active priority ch's it did not cause the frequency it was on to resume scanning as is the case with some scanners. Priority plus This is a new feature the 780 does not have and one I quite like basically when in priority plus mode the 3300 will scan only the priority ch's in each bank. Like a watered down select scan feature that comes with some scanners like the AOR 8200. Transfer I noticed this button but did not investigate it for some time and when I did find out what it was for I was very pleased. Basically it is for moving ch's complete with all data such as ctcss/dcs, alpha tag settings to another memory location. Very nice and I can see this feature being used extensively.
Battery saver It has one and that's about all I can say really. I never ran a test on how long the battery life lasted without it activated, so am not sure how well it does its job. Incidentally the battery supplied with the 3300 comes in the form of a 4 cell AA Ni-Mh. pack. Battery life is not the best I have come across but should give a full days scanning. (Remember the last scanner I reviewed was the Icom R-20 and the battery life on that is phenomenal so I have been spoiled).
ctcss/dcs No self respecting scanner these days should come without this feature. AOR take note! The ctcss/dcs feature is one of the best in my opinion on the 3300. It is the same as the 780 whereas it will search in ascending order through all tones (Tone 69.3 is however missing just like on the 780) and if you manually hold on to a frequency, when a conversation is dropped and it stops searching for available tones and then the conversation starts again, the 3300 will start from where it left off rather than starting from tone 67.0 Hz Nice! when it has finished searching all ctcss tones and none are found then if it is using dcs tones the 3300 will search them automatically and for some reason unlike the ctcss tones find them instantly! The best ctcss/dcs tone feature I have seen up to date is the radio shack pro 92 which would find any tones used instantly. This would be nice and I understand Uniden scanners in the pipeline will have this feature. Once a tone is found to enter it to the memory ch is just a case of pressing enter. That's it all done! You can if you already know the tone in use manually enter it into memory. The only negative side to this feature is if you add an alpha tag text to the memory ch there is no way at a glance of seeing if you have a tone stored. This is why I said earlier give us a bigger display. With the 780 you can instantly see the tone stored at a glance. There is a way round this and that is to hold in the menu button for 2 seconds and it will then show you the settings for the ch including the tone in use. Attenuator From the brief test I did with the Attenuator I am pleased to say that it is not too harsh and apparently does the job well. The Icom R20 completely flattened just about every signal so I was pleased to see this was not so with the 3300. However again just like the CTCSS/DCS feature there is no way of visually seeing on the display when a ch has attenuation set. This to me is a big no no because although a signal could be strong in one location moving further away could reduce the signal to the point it cant be heard with the attenuation active. Whereas with a visual display the reason for silence becomes obvious right away. Again to see if the attenuator is set on a ch then you have to hold in the menu button for 2 seconds and then scroll to the attenuator function to see if it is active or not. To me this is not good enough and I would not be using this feature.
Mute function There is a mute button (same button for the transfer feature but a secondary function) which mutes the audio from the loudspeaker, which can be activated by holding the button down for 2 seconds. To be honest I have this feature on the 780 but find myself just turning the volume all the way down when I want audio muted as opposed to using this feature. It's quicker! Out and about This is my favourite part of scanning, taking the scanner out with me in shopping centre's etc. To do this I like to be discreet and not drawing attention to the fact that I have a radio of any description. The 3300 i'm afraid is just not up to this task. Simply, it's too bloody big! Even if I used it with it in my jacket pocket with earphones, sometimes I like to look at the display to see who I am listening to. But as the display is half way down the radio I found I had to lift it a fair way out of my pocket to see the display. This made me paranoid that every security guard and cctv camera was pointing my way. Earphones A nice surprise for me when plugging stereo headphones in. With most scanners you get the audio in one ear unless you get one of those mon-stereo jack plugs. However with the 3300 you get the audio in both ears. I have only come across this once before on the Radio shack pro-92 scanner. Final thoughts I did not give this scanner too much hope at the beginning of the review. But I am a lover of the Uniden UBC780 and I had to find out if it was as good. I think my comments say it all I really did grow to love this receiver it is indeed a 780 in a handheld package with a couple of extra features and a couple of good ones taken out for some strange reason (Delay times). I have not harped on to much about the trunking capabilities as just about all motorola trunked systems in the UK are about to go digital and the other trunking protocols it is capable of following are not used here so I really could not give it an assessment. I am aware people in europe are probably looking to purchase this receiver so all I will say is that the limited trunking I did with this scanner worked flawlessly and probably even better than the 780 (Sometimes with the 780 the first word sometimes gets clipped slightly but I noticed this did not happen with the 3300). I have not mentioned about the digital capabilities as the digital system used in the UK is out of reach of even this scanner due to encryption etc. I understand some tetra systems in europe are not encrypted, so do not know if this has the capability to follow those systems or whether its just the US apco 25 protocol. Would I buy one? Indeed I would if I didn't like to be discreet with my scanning. For the home or out in the car or even at an air show this scanner will be just fine. My initial thoughts on not looking strong enough to take the knocks have been dispelled. In fact this is a very strongly put together receiver. Well done Uniden. Thank You! My thanks go to Jonathan from Javiation for the loan of this receiver. This unit along with software cables can be purchased from them by clicking the link below.
Current information from javiation as follows The UBC-3300XLT available for immediate delivery. Within the UK the cost is £199.00 Inc VAT and next day delivery. For delivery within the EU the price is £215.00 including next day UPS delivery. For delivery outside the UK and EU the price is £185.00 Pounds including express delivery. As a guide this is about US$335.00 at the moment including delivery.
Radio serial #44000303 Oct 2004
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