Red Wave Radio

Yes....... bark... bark         bark...bark....bark

Quote:>Anybody know of any mods for this "puppy" ?

Scan between 1270-1295mhz fer "cell" stuff....U will get a harmonic or
an image freq or 2x the IF added to the 850mhz band...WORKS GREAT!!
Have one myself !   dave

this up two years ago in National Scanning. Basically, what you want to

do, is to swap the logic control lines that drive transistors Q4 and Q5

on the receiver PC board. This can be done with a DPDT switch.

Transistor Q4 controls activation of the 800 MHz band signal input

filter. Q5 activates the 350 - 500 MHz band signal filter. By doing this

logic line swap around, when you set the '8500 to search between 371.19

and 396.80 MHz, you are actually receiving signals from the 869.04 to

894.97 MHz(Cellular). This occurs because the radio uses the same range

of Local Oscillator freqs to receive the 870 Mhz(blocked freqs) area as

is used for 370 MHz reception(freqs the radioo can be programmed for).

In the case of the BC8500, you also need to do an additional control

line swap, to that of the control lines that drive transistors Q41 and

Q42. These set the operating mode of the radio. In the 370 MHz range,

the default(and only) operating mode the radio can be set for is AM. For

Cellular reception you need to have Narrow FM mode activated. This is

done by swapping the logic line that drives Q42(AM mode) to alternately

activate Q41(for NFM mode).Again, this can easily be done with a DPDT

switch. This additional feature can also be used to permit AM/NFM mode

switching for other types of reception as well. In most other

scanners,like the BC9000, operating mode can be user controlled from the

keypad.

One further step is the be sure and set your tuning/search frequency

step rate to 5 KHz for acurate on-channel tuning.  

Before starting this modification, I highly recomend obtaining a copy of

the BC8500 service manual to serve as a guide. If you'd rather not

attempt this work yourself, try contacting Cellular Security Group at

508-281-8892 .

There are a couple of other things you can do with the BC8500 that we

documented in the former RCMA Journal. These mods include: improved

preamp ICs, better Tape Out audio, and adding heat sinks to the voltage

regs.(one on the far right and another near the front of the main PCB)

Have fun.

:Anybody know of any mods for this "puppy" ?

Hitting it with an axe will reduce the frequency coverage.
Moving it closer to the source of a signal will improve reception.