I sold the Uniden HomePatrol I and bought the HomePatrol II and used that in my truck mostly.  It did better than the 536 for me.  I used a GPS unit to automatically tune to new frequencies in areas around the country when on road trips.   But it is still not perfect with simulcast so I bought the next and newest scanner for me...

I've had quite a few scanners over the years.  It started with my dad bringing home a Regency 10 channel crystal controlled scanner around 1975.  We had the Indianapolis Police Dept and Marion County Sheriffs Dept plus the Fire department in this scanner.  It was where I first heard all the action and got an interest in police work, which I later became a part of.

Another old, dependable, programmable scanner was the Uniden Bearcat BC 145XL.  I got one cheap and sold it soon after since I still had the Bearcat 300.  Just last year I found one of these with the power supply in nice shape for just $2!  Worked great but, of course, you can't listen to much anymore with all the trunked systems on these old units.  I programmed in our county fire VHF rebroadcast and sold it for $20.

Hoping to get better reception with simulcast channels I bought the Uniden BCD536HP.  It did not do any better in my area and in fact was a little worse much to my surprise.

Around 1985 I got this Regency HX1000 programmable handheld.  That was a game changer to be able to take the scanner with me into places when I was working at the newspaper.  I wouldn't miss one fire or shooting anymore!  It too was a dependable workhorse for several years.

The Uniden Bearcat SDS-100 handheld has solved all my simulcast reception issues in my area!  It pulls in far away signals very well and can go wherever I want it to.  I mount it in the truck with a phone magnet system and it stays put.  I plug an amplified speaker that is mounted in the truck into the earphone jack to get loud audio.  It even pulls in signal in my basement.  I have customized it to my liking in the Uniden Sentinal software and it runs like a champ.  This is the closest thing to having an actual police HT to listen to. No more garbled transmissions. This is now the only scanner I own.

The Uniden HomePatrol I was a big step up for listening to the newer systems.  The ease of use was very nice.  But it had a hard time with the simulcast in our area and would garble some of the transmissions.   

I bought the Uniden BCT8 and programmed the new trunked frequencies when they came to our area.  What a pain in the rear to use this radio.  I never really used it since I had my police HT at home and could listen on that.  

Around 1980 or soon after the Bearcat 300 came out.  My parents had family friends that worked for Bearcat at the time.  This was a beast of a radio and ushered in the digital age.  Had lots of fun with this radio. It was in the radio shack and in at least three cars.  I used this radio extensively as a staff news photographer in the mid-80's and it always performed well as mobile rig although it was large.