607
Item nr.

Uniden Bearcat UBC360CLT Church scanner

The Design

Power consumption: Switching the radio on or off does not influence power consumption. The mains adapter by itself, without the radio, takes just 240mW, which is quite low. Connecting it to the radio, switched off, with also the backlight off, brings the power usage to 2010mW. Switching the radio on (at low volume) just takes an extra 10 to 20mW, which is neglectible. The backlight increases the power bij about 300mW, AM reception takes about 100mW more than FM. And of course, power to the speaker also increases the consumption.
Powering it on or off making no difference, the radio can be used by church members without ever touching it: just switch it on the church frequency and adjust volume to your preferences. Briefly before the service starts, the church activates its transmitter and the squelch opens and acivates the radio (and usually a church volunteer will read out the Scripture readings and hymns in the service). After the last organ sounds fade out, the transmission ends and the squelch function silences the radio. Assuming the two Sunday services are less than 2 hours each, power consumption in the remaining 164 hours of the week is like 40 times useful power.
It would make more sense, of course, to disconnect the set when not in use. Fortunately, all frequency memories are kept without power, only the clock would need resetting after every power on, but let's decide you don't need a radio to look what time it is...

AM Operation: It is very nice that this VHF/UHF scanner can receive Medium Wave broadcasts as well. Unfortunately, I got the set without the AM loop antenna. I found out that one of the terminals is ground and the other can be fed with a 2 meter wire antenna very well. While on the VHF and UHF bands the steps size can be changed, this is not the case for AM! The AM grid is fixed to the 10kHz channel separation used in the America's and it is even impossible to manually select frequencies other than multiples of 10. So we are a little lucky here with the disputable selectivity on MW. Radio Paradijs on 1467kHz can be well received by tuning 1470 or 1460kHz.

Obtained	7/2025 from Kringloop De Oude Molen, Opheusden, sn=48003513.
Condition	10.
Value (est.)	22€.
Sound sample	PLAY SOUND   Not many churches use the Church Radio band for broadcasting their services. The only one I hear in Zeist is the Gereformeerde Gemeente.
Needs	AM loop antenna (radio receives well with a wire in one of the loop contacts).

This Object

Around 1999, an engineer, let us call him A, living in The Veluwe incidentally overheard a church broadcast when operating a VHF scanner. After helping out a friend to receive the church service, A's assistance was asked frequently and he started a small scanner side business. He bought Uniden scanners, programmed the church frequencies, wrote a simplified user manual, and sold the units. The older units were of type 244clt, these had the disadvantage theat on power on, they would always start in scan mode. The later model 360 would start in the mode in which it is switched off, which makes it even simpler to operate. An additional advantage of the next model, 370clt, was that they can be programmed automatically by connecting to a PC.
The usual range of the church transmitters is 5 to 10 km, but A reports one customer in Spakenburg who received Veenendaal, some 40km away. Many units were sold to elderly people in care homes. A received many phone calls to help get the radio's back in good order, after the setup had been disrupted "after the cleaner had visited". A retired around 2020 and then also stopped selling the scanners. By that time, church VHF radio was already on its return, and most churches had initiated internet streaming in the corona lockdown periods.