MULTI-PART REVIEW ON UNIDEN BEARCAT 980 AM/SSB MOBILE CB

[PART ONE]

Uniden pulled out of the am/ssb market a long time ago leaving a large vacant hole. Evidently they have decided to return to the market with the Uniden Bearcat 980SSB mobile. Initial impressions (just looking at the pictures) are that it looks like the typical cheap looking Chinese stuff I've seen pushed on us for decades.


Call me old fashioned, but I prefer a analog s/rf meter vs. the digital ones. Like many CB's sold today, you can play around with color schemes to find one that suits you. It doesn't have any great mods and reminds me of Radio Shack CB's which were pretty darn hard to modify, if at all, keeping their nose clean with the Feds.

FEATURES:

• Weather - usually this feature is just "okay"
• Talkback - use it on SSB and die
• Memory Scan - useless
• CB/PA - There must still be a function for this, although I've never known anyone that used it.

From reading about half the reviews and doing some digging around I came to three conclusions:

1. The BEEP is annoying, but apparently there is a fix for that out on the Internet

2. Most of these seems to arrive dead-on frequency which you'd really (REALLY) want if you couldn't mod the clarifier for SSB transmissions, otherwise you'd get a bunch of sidebanders kinda angry at ya.

3. Unless someone comes up with anything else, the "Beep" mod is it.


Okay, Review Part 1 is over, I've done a quick glance at it and once I get it in Moby, I'll see what results I get compared to the Cobra 138XLR already in the truck.   Expect updates to occur from time-to-time as I find things I like or don't care for, not to mention performance.   'Nuff Said, Woody