Special Report
The GRE PSR600 Digital Scanner
Features, Operation and Competition
A Scanner Master Ultimate Review
Copyright 2009, Richard Carlson/Scanner Master Corporation
Introduction
GRE has produced scanners for the US market for decades, but they are a new name in the industry here.
How’s that? Well, remember the Radio Shack PRO2004, PRO2005 or PRO2006? How about the PRO96 or
its mobile brother PRO2096? These were all built by GRE and sold by Radio Shack. While some scanners
sold by Radio Shack were built by Uniden, most of the big sellers were GRE built.
At the 2007 Dayton Hamvention GRE snuck in a couple of their rumored new line of scanners for direct
sales in the USA. A privileged few (including the author) got to check them out for a few minutes each. It
was apparent immediately that GRE had produced a winner, or better yet, several winners.
What GRE did was introduce three lines of scanners, each line consisting of a handheld and a base/mobile
version. Radios within each line are electronically identical, even to the extent that they can clone to each
other.
After the GRE line of scanners were unveiled to the public and readied for sale Radio Shack announced a
new line of scanners that mysteriously mirrored the specs of some of the GRE’s. The Radio Shack PRO106
turned out to be a GRE PSR500 with a rearranged front panel. The Radio Shack PRO197 was a clone of the
PSR600 base/mobile. The PSR300 and 400 radios are closely related to Radio Shacks PRO97, 2055, 163
and 164 scanners.
The three lines are:
Basic
GRE
PSR100 Handheld and PSR200 Desktop
Advanced
GRE
PSR300 Handheld and PSR400 Base/Mobile,
Radio Shack
PRO164 Handhelds and PRO163 Base/Mobiles
Digital
GRE
PSR500 Handheld and PSR600 Base/Mobile
Radio Shack
PRO106 Handheld and PRO197 Base/Mobile
While the Radio Shack and GRE versions of the various scanners are visually and electronically similar in
most respects there is one difference that one must remember, and that is that the firmware updates are not
interchangeable between Radio Shack and GRE versions. Programming files are interchangeable, which
makes sharing files easier.
While the Basic and Advanced lines use conventional programming methods such as defined banks and
channel arrangements, the Digital line uses an entirely different structure called “Object Oriented User
Interface” or more succinctly, “Scannable Objects”. Basically what this means is that you program things
(Objects) into your radio and then select the things you want to scan (Scannable Objects). These Scannable
Objects could be regular frequencies, talkgroups on a trunked system or one of several types of searches.
The Advanced line of scanners are fine for many areas if you do not need to monitor digital
communications but want more memory and features than the Basic line provides. The Basic Line is fine if
you only need to monitor a few conventional channels such as aircraft, railroads or local public safety
channels and don’t need any advanced features of the Advanced or Digital lines.
Both the Advanced and Digital lines provide large channel capacity, support for several methods of
trunking and PL/DPL capability. Both lines support the 800 MHz Rebanding.
(You can read a great deal more about Rebanding elsewhere on the web but, in short, in order to separate
certain NEXTEL/cellular radio channels from public safety channels as a means to limit interference
