Pro-2006 Scanner Hack

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The Radio Shack PRO-2035 Scanner:
How Does It Compare With the PRO-2006?

INTRODUCTION Your new RadioShack PRO-2066 150-Channel Mobile Trunking Scanner is one of a new generation of scanners designed to track Motorola Type 1 and Type II. Scanners be manufactured so as to not be easily modifiable to pick up those transmissions. Do not open your scanner's case to make any.

Copyright 1994, 1995 by Bob Parnass, AJ9S

[NOTES: An earlier version of this article was published
in the author's Scanner Equipment column, Monitoring Times
magazine, January 1995. This article may not be reproduced
in whole or in part on CDROMS, in bulletin boards,
networks, or publications which charge for service without
permission of the author.]

Radio Shack recently discontinued the PRO-2006,
perhaps the best base/mobile scanner radio ever sold, and
replaced it with the 1000 channel PRO-2035. Bob Grove
reviewed the PRO-2035 in October 1994 Monitoring Times
magazine. How does it stack up against the PRO-2006? Read
on.

Background

In 1986, Radio Shack introduced the PRO-2004 wide
band programmable scanner and it immediately captured the
attention of hobbyists. The PRO-2004 was made by General
Research Electronics and was different from other models of
that era due to its large 300 channel capacity and nearly
continuous frequency coverage of 25 to 1300 MHz. Key to
the PRO-2004's superior performance over such a wide
frequency range was the use of 'up conversion,' a design
found in expensive commercial and military receivers.
The PRO-2004 was replaced by the PRO-2005 in 1989,
which was upgraded to the PRO-2006 one year later. The
PRO-2005 and PRO-2006 were manufactured using tiny surface
mount components, and despite a different cabinet, display
panel, and keypad, the PRO-2004 and PRO-2006 circuitry and
features were very similar. The PRO-2006 scanned and
searched faster and was more sensitive. Except for the use
of a plastic case, the PRO-2006 was equal to, or better
than the PRO-2004.
By 1993, the highly prized PRO-2006 was getting long
in tooth. Uniden introduced the Bearcat 8500xlt, the first
Bearcat scanner featuring up conversion and a tuning knob.
Radio Shack's somewhat late response to the 8500xlt is the
new PRO-2035.
The PRO-2035 analyzed in this review was purchased
from a local Radio Shack store and bears a serial number
near 3000.

Physical

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The PRO-2035 is about 5/8' wider and 1/2' taller
than the PRO-2006. Extra room in the spacious cabinet will
interest experimenters and companies who may provide
aftermarket accessories for the PRO-2035.
The dark plastic case has rounded corners, typical
of contemporary 'European' stying. The squelch and volume
knobs are the same dark color as the front panel, and you
can't see where they are set as Radio Shack opted not to
paint the hairline marker grooves a contrasting color. You
can paint a white groove in each knob using a small bottle
of White Out correction fluid, a product intended for
covering typing mistakes.
Although there is a jack for running the PRO-2035
from a 12 VDC source, Radio Shack refers to this model as a
'home scanner.'

Frequency Coverage

There is a typographical error on page 3 of the
owner's manual which specifies that the PR0-2035 tunes the
470 - 805.750 MHz range. Coverage in this band actually
stops at 520 MHz and resumes at 760 MHz. Despite the
limits cited in the manual, the PRO-2035 tested for this
article tuned 25 - 520, 760 - 823.995, 849.005 - 868.995,
and 894.005 - 1300 MHz.
Lately, the most frequently posed scanner question
on the Internet and computer bulletin boards is, 'How can I
modify my scanner to cover the cellular phone range?' The
FCC no longer permits companies to sell scanners which
cover the 800 MHz cellular phone frequencies or which can
be easily modified to cover them. As sold in the USA, the
PRO-2035 does not tune the cellular frequencies directly.
This raises an interesting question for a product
reviewer or scanner experimenter: If he or she finds an
easy way to expand frequency coverage into the cellular
phone band, should the information be published? Doing so
could lead to a product recall.

Memory Features

The PRO-2006 has 400 conventional memory channels
and 10 Monitor channels backed up by an ordinary 9 volt
battery. The PRO-2035 has 1000 conventional memory
channels and 100 Monitor channels backed up by a special 3
volt battery soldered onto the main circuit board. The
owner's manual states memory contents will be retained for
up to 3 months in the event of a power interruption.
Both the PRO-2006 and PRO-2035 have 10 pairs of
search limits, but the PRO-2006 permitted searching only
one range at a time. The PRO-2035 is more flexible and
allows 'linking' search ranges together sequentially. You
can set search range #1 limits to 46.61 - 46.97 MHz and
search range #2 to 49.61 - 49.97 MHz, for example, and the
PRO-2035 will alternate searching both ranges.
Here's a tip: If your favorite search range has one
or two birdies, or frequencies you want to skip, you can
break the range up into two or more sequential ranges and
link them together.
Not only are there a lot more channels in the PRO-
2035, but several new ways to manipulate them. By pressing
a few keys, you can:

1) zero all 100 memories in any single bank

2) zero all 1000 memories in all banks

3) zero all the locked out memories in any bank

4) display the number of 'empty' channels in any bank. The PRO-2035
owner's manual refers to memories which contain 0.0000
as 'empty' memories.

5) move all the nonempty channels in a bank downwards
to fill in the empty channels in the bank

6) transfer multiple Monitor channels into one or more banks

7) transfer all the channels in any bank into the Monitor channels

With so many channels, the PRO-2035 needs another
feature, but it's missing: it should skip over empty
channels automatically. Although the PRO-2035 scans twice
as fast as the PRO-2006, it still wastes time scanning
empty channels unless they are locked out. The bulk move
operations listed above clear the lockout on each
destination channel. Owners will certainly grow weary of
pressing the LOCKOUT and MANUAL keys for each empty
channel.
There are 10 banks of 100 channels each. Bank 1 is
for channels 1-100, bank 2 for 102-200, and so forth. This
is more difficult to use than the numbering convention
employed in the Icom R-7100, where bank 0 is for channels
0-99, bank 1 for channels 100-199, etc. With Icom's
numbering system, you can easily tell what bank a channel
is in by its first digit, e.g., that channel 650 is in bank
6. In the PRO-2035, channel 650 is in bank 7, and that's
confusing. All that aside, a better scheme would be to
have more banks and fewer channels per bank, say 50 banks
of 20 channels, or even user definable banks, because a
bank of 100 channels is really too large for sensible
programming.
Almost 20 years ago, the Electra/Bearcat BC-250
incorporated a fantastic new feature termed 'search and
store.' One could program a pair of frequency limits,
start an automatic search, and store all active frequencies
into a special scratchpad memory. The active frequencies
could later be recalled and programmed into regular memory
channels. Electra's scheme was elegant -- smart enough to
store each active frequency once and only once. What's
more, one could store unwanted frequencies, e.g., birdies
and paging frequencies, into the scratchpad and they would
be skipped during conventional searches. Today's Icom R-
7100 receiver boasts a similar feature.
Scanner hobbyists were hoping Radio Shack would
offer a search and store feature in its next premium
scanner, and it did -- sort of. The PRO-2035 has an Auto
Store mode which stores active frequencies found during a
search into one or more conventional memory banks. Once
all the empty channels are filled, the PRO-2035 emits a
series of beeps and stops searching. There is a separate
pair of frequency limits for Auto Store so you won't use up
one of the 10 pairs mentioned earlier.
What a pity the Auto Store implementation is not all
it could be. You cannot use it to skip unwanted
frequencies. Worse, it will store the same frequencies
over and over again into empty memory channels. Let's say
you program the PRO-2035 auto store limits to search
between 407 and 419 MHz, and specify that active
frequencies will be stored in bank 4. You start the search
and let it run while you run some errands, hoping that
while you are away, the PRO-2035 will be catching dozens of
interesting federal frequencies.
Upon returning, you find the PRO-2035 snared a busy
Veteran's Administration hospital paging system and stored
the same frequency in 30 channels! That's just what
happened during the evaluation. Even with its limitations,
the Auto Store mode is beneficial and a few new frequencies
were found while using it.
Here's a tip not mentioned in the owner's manual --
you can use the Auto Store mode to intentionally store the
same frequency in several channels. Set both the lower and
upper auto store limits to be the same frequency, open the
squelch, and start the auto store search. The PRO-2035
will chug along, storing your favorite police or other
frequency in all the channels in the banks you selected.
The tests which follow were performed by switching
an outdoor Antenna Specialists AV-801 antenna back and
forth between a PRO-2006 and the PRO-2035.

Sensitivity

Spot checks were made to compare sensitivity by
listening to the same weak signals on both scanners. Both
radios were similarly sensitive except in three instances:
the PRO-2035 was slightly more sensitive at 147 and 852 MHz
and noticeable more sensitive at 460 MHz.
This could be splitting hairs, as my 10 year old
Electra/Bearcat BC-300, an old design optimized for 4
bands, beat both Radio Shack models in the sensitivity
department.

Dynamic Range

The PRO-2035 and PRO-2006 are high end models, and
people who buy them are more apt to connect them to outdoor
antennas. Therefore, it's important that they perform well
in strong signal environments.
Perhaps the biggest performance difference between
the PRO-2006 and our PRO-2035 became apparent when
listening to weak signals in the presence of a strong
station transmitting on another frequency. The PRO-2006
has much better dynamic range than the reviewer's PRO-2035.
Using the PRO-2035, a moderately strong signal from
the 460.525 MHz sheriff's repeater 10 miles distant wiped
out weaker signals on frequencies 50 kHz in either
direction and produced hiss on weak signals 100 kHz away.
The desense phenomenon was a problem in the 155 MHz band,
too. The PRO-2006 was not affected by these signals.
To explore the problem further, the PRO-2006 was
replaced with a PRO-2005 and the tests run again. Neither
the PRO-2005 nor PRO-2006 were desensitized by the
moderately strong signals.

Images and Spurious Responses

The PRO-2004/5/6 series, the portable PRO-43, and
the PRO-2035 use 'up conversion,' but the PRO-2035's
609.005 - 613.5 MHz first IF (intermediate frequency) is 2
MHz higher than the earlier models. We speculate the
change was made to avoid interference problems which
bothered some owners of the earlier scanners who lived near
a channel 20 television transmitter. The TV signal mixes
with one of the local oscillators and generated a third
signal near 48.5 MHz, the 2nd IF, causing interference on
several frequencies.
Although up conversion affords improved image
rejection, triple conversion and frequency synthesis
circuitry are complicated and several images were heard,
especially on the PRO-2035.
On both the PRO-2006 and PRO-2035, images of paging
transmitters were audible in the 159 - 162 MHz range.
Analysis shows these signals to be 771.9975 MHz higher than
the displayed frequency. For example, the 931.5125 MHz
KOR933 paging transmitter, located more than 7 miles away,
was heard when the PRO-2035 was tuned to 159.515 MHz.
A paging image hindered reception of a sheriff's
repeater in the next county on 159.15 MHz. The same paging
images were present but barely detectable on the PRO-2006.
Another image, heard only by the PRO-2035, appeared on
146.075 MHz, and it was actually a 904.075 MHz data
transmission.
The PRO-2035 received cellular phone images, reduced
in strength, between 1105 and 1115 MHz. The difference
between the actual and displayed frequencies varied:

PRO-2035 Actual Difference
tuned to transmitted
frequency
(Image) (Actual) (Actual - Image)
-------- ------- -------
1105.550 870.450 235.100
1107.875 876.120 231.755
1110.900 881.100 229.800
1113.470 886.530 226.940
1114.840 893.160 221.680

New Features

The new tuning knob has a light feel but is a
welcome feature nonetheless. A look inside the PRO-2035
revealed the tuning knob is connected to a special switch
assembly rather than an optical chopper, or photo
interrupter, used in higher price radios and computer mice.
The knob can be operated as a channel selector or as
a VFO control. We discovered a technique, not mentioned in
the owner's manual, which let's one enter a frequency and
tune around without actually storing the frequency. To
tune around 154.6 MHz, for example,

1) press MANUAL (if not already in the manual mode)
2) press 154.6
3) press TUNE
4) rotate the knob in either direction to begin tuning

If you have never used a scanner with a tuning knob,
you will be pleasantly surprised how handy it is to be able
to tune around using a knob instead of fighting with the up
and down keys on the PRO-2006.
While putting the PRO-2035 through its paces, the
tuning knob was used in the VFO mode to chase down and
identify a spurious paging signal, a 'spur,' which was
drifting up and down the 2 meter ham band. The spur caused
a serious interference problem to three area repeaters.
Chasing a wandering spur requires the use of a
tuning knob and the PRO-2035 served well. The PRO-2006 was
virtually useless in this application.

Other Considerations

The PRO-2035 specifications state 50 channels per
second as the fastest scanning speed. Our PRO-2035 scanned
slightly faster than 50 channels per second in a bank
loaded entirely with 800 MHz NFM frequencies, and slowed to
40 channels per second in a bank purposely loaded with a
mixture of frequencies in different bands and modes.
Some scanner buffs refuse to use the priority
feature on their radios because priority sampling tends to
'chop up' transmissions on nonpriority channels. The
priority feature in the PRO-2035 is well behaved in this
regard, and one can hardly tell it's enabled.
While the squelch on the reviewer's PRO-2035 had an
acceptable amount of hysteresis, some users may wish to
reduce it. That is, decrease the amount of 'play' in the
squelch control. One could lessen the hysteresis by
replacing the tiny 100 Kohm surface mount resistor between
pins 12 and 14 of IC-2, a TK10420, with a 220K or 330K ohm
resistor.
Wine gets better with age. That's not true with the
EL (electroluminescent) panel used to backlight the
displays in the PRO-2004, PRO-2005, and PRO-2006. The EL
panel grows dim as it is used. To prolong its life, GRE
replaced the dimmer switch in later production PRO-2006s
with a switch used to turn off the back light.
Instead of an EL panel, the new PRO-2035 utilizes
LEDs (light emitting diodes) to illuminate the display, and
that's an improvement. Unless overdriven, LEDs will work
reliably for a very long time.

Summary

Being at the top of the Radio Shack scanner line, we
expect a lot from from the PRO-2035. Its tuning knob and
memory manipulation features are significant advantages
over the PRO-2006. The discontinued PRO-2006 exhibited
better dynamic range and fewer images and remains an
excellent performer.
The PRO-2035 is a very good scanner. With a few
changes, it could be a great scanner.
After this review was written, Uniden introduced the
BC9000XLT top line base model, which the author tested and
prefers to the PRO-2035. See the BC9000XLT review in
Monitoring Times, March 1995 for more information.

For Further Reading

'The Radio Shack PRO-2004 Scanner,' by Bob Parnass,
Monitoring Times, March 1987.

'The Radio Shack PRO-2005 Scanner,' by Bob Parnass, RCMA
Journal, August 1989.

'The Realistic PRO-2006,' by Bob Parnass, Monitoring Times,
October 1990.

'The Radio Shack PRO-2035,' by Bob Grove, Monitoring Times,
October 1994.

'Communications Receivers: Principles and Design,' by
Ulrich L. Rhode and T. T. N. Bucher, McGraw Hill Book Co.,
1988, ISBN 0-07-05370-1.

'Radio Communications Receivers,' by Cornell Drentea, TAB
Books Inc., 1982, ISBN 0-8306-1393-5.

--

Copyright 1995, Bob Parnass, AJ9S AMPS Wireless Development Laboratory