Realistic Pro 2042
Realistic pro 2042 radio scanner review, I bought this scanner 1st time around when I was 14 years old I got it for Christmas and had it for a couple of years when you could listen to the police years ago, I then sold the base scanner because once the police went over to tetra it kind of became redundant!
A good few years later (2009) I got really into ham radio and got right back into radio scanners again so I had a good look around and managed to get hold of a second hand Realistic pro 2042 for about £60! I was very happy to get one for this price as I remember that all those years ago it was considerably more!
When I opened the box I was really pleased to find the scanner in perfect condition, it had a couple of minor scratches but overall I was very happy with it!
The radio scanner really has a good look and feel to it, seems very well made and the display lights up a nice yellow colour. It has 1,000 channel memories to store all your frequencies in and I really would struggle to fill even a third of the channels.
The memory channels are split into banks so it is really easy to manage and I found the scanner very easy to program, it did not come with a manual but I got one of the internet for free but I was surprised how simple it is to use without needing to read the manual too much.
The back of the realistic pro 2042 has a tape out connector so you can connect to a tape recorder and has a socket to plug in an external speaker as the in built one isn’t very good, the scanner also has an attenuator switch but I never found I needed to change it. There is of course an antenna socket to fit a BNC connector I did buy a convertor from the BNC to PL259 so I could use my sharmans 2m/70cms antenna that I have on the roof.
The base scanner has loads of features including a priority feature and has a separate volume and squelch knobs. I found that the scanner scans through channels really really fast! I have a few frequencies programmed in and it scans 100 channels in a couple of seconds!
Overall I really am pleased to be reunited with this fantastic scanner, even though there isn’t as many frequencies to listen to in my area I still use my Realistic pro 2042 quite a lot and even though it’s nearly 15 years old it still works perfectly! Please check out some of my other reviews including the Puxing PX 888 and the Yaesu FT8900R!
Please also look at me handheld scanner the Realistic Pro 29