Uniden BEARCAT 980 40- Channel SSB CB Radio with Sideband NOAA WeatherBand,7- Color Digital Display PA/CB Switch and Noise Cancelling Mic, Wireless Mic Compatible

Good radio so far. Ive had it for a few months and been on several trail runs with it. I was having a problem with intermittently distorted audio on receive and was beginning to think I was going to have to send it back for repair, but finally discovered that my coax connection in the rear of the radio had loosened. Tightened the coax connector and havent had any issues since. OBJECTIONS / ISSUES: Beeps for EVERYTHING get kind of annoying. Uses a 6 pin mic plug instead of the standard 4 pin, but comes with an adapter so you can use aftermarket mics like the Astatic RD104E-4B Road Devil I use on mine. (See review.) Plastic face plate scratches VERY easily, which is unfortunate in a dusty environment like an offroad vehicle. Also prone to bad glare, so if you prefer dim displays, youll find yourself unable to read it in bright light. LED intensity is adjustable, but the process to do so is unhandy. So switching from bright to dim for day/night is really not something youre likely to want to do on a regular basis. Not sure why they didnt just put a dim button or switch on the front panel like they did with the Bearcat 880 and 680 models. Youll almost certainly want an external speaker for any sort of serious use. The internal one is just barely tolerable. If it sounds like I hate it, I dont. Its a fine radio. Im just trying to point out some of the issues where it could stand improvement. If you dont need SSB, save yourself $15 and get the Bearcat 880. Or, if space is an issue, the Bearcat 680 is about another $15 less, but you sacrifice some bells & whistles with the 680, Wx being one of the very important ones, in my opinion.

I like all the lights on front , plus Radio seems to receive very good just made contact about 14 miles away and other party sounded like he was in my front yard, very loud, Im getting 2 mod to 4 watts output. Im using 102 whip up about 30ft to tip of whip. cant beat whip for receive.. Other party said he had good strong copy on me also running barefooted radio. I just wish remote mike had squelch control on it would be great then. It even let me know my linear was ok during transmit ,later radio started loosing Audio at times. off & On problem sent back to seller for repair or refund, liked radio functions

Just installed so I cant say yea or ney yet. Disappointed how dim it lights up in the daytime, even with full brightness. Hard to see in daytime light. Will evaluate after I get familiar with the 980 SSB. I took off 2 stars for dim lighting.

Horribly dim. I saw other people say it was dim but this horribly dim. Everything works …..at night.

I was pleased with the overall quality and operation of the radio. I have not experienced the weather alerts nor used the SSB operation. The one problem I had was the screws provided to hold the microphone to the side of the radio did not match the holes in the radio. They were too small or too large depending on which set was chosen. I close to tap the holes in the radio and use machine screws from my shop. This will not matter if you plan to mount the microphone holder on some other surface. Just drill holes to match one of the two screw sizes provides and you will be fine.

I like the sideband, but dont like that the course and fine tune you cant see what frequency it is tuned to. I like the sound quality is great and other people say i sound great. I dont like that I had to buy a external SWR meater to get a accurate SWR reeding . I give this radio a 4.

Excellent price verses truck stops!!! Great product right out of the box

for the price, the radio really seems to receive pretty well. a lot of the configuration is menu driven. i am using this as base station, so i dont have to worry about trying to make changes while driving. i like the radio overall now that i have discovered its two primary flaws: the display has issues and goes out over time (mine has not yet), and the stock mic that comes with it is pretty much bad. i replaced it with a powered mic (Astatic Road Devil; $40 approximately on Amazon), and that eliminated any problems transmitting. time will tell if the display has issues for me, but, for now, this is a four star radio for the money. i also have several AnyTone AT6666s, and those are worth their weight in gold. the Bearcat 980 is a great radio for beginners so long as you get a power mic to go along with it. photo shows both the radio with the Road Devil power mic.

Radio functions OK. The radio needed a power microphone for use on SSB as modulation level is low. The stock mic would only drive the SSB transmitter up to a few watts. Things not seen in the instructions... To use the channel scanner, You must first turn the squelch up. The scanner will not start if there is any noise coming from the speaker. The RF gain is adjustable if the RF gain button is held down and the channel knob is turned. Numbers appear on the face as the knob is turned indicating the RF gain level. After 9 months had trouble with the radio not turning on. Switch would have to be clicked on and off repeatedly for the radio to come on. Took the bottom cover off and sprayed DeOxit into a small crevice on the closed up rectangular volume control. Found a small metal tab on the side of the volume control that was touching a rectangular pad on the daughterboard for the face but not soldered to it. Soldered it on. After having an external speaker plugged in for 9 months found the internal speaker no longer works. Think the speaker plug contacts are not springing back properly. Left that as it was and plugged the internal speaker back in. Radio turns on OK now, still using it.

I purchased the Uniden Bearcat 980SSB radio about a week ago and have had some mixed results after 24 hours or so of operation over the period of the week since then. The serial number on this unit is X000CIQY01 and the unit looks brand new, not refurbed or rebuilt. The radio is a real sharp looking piece of equipment, the controls and buttons have a good feel, and the price is good for being both an AM and SSB radio. Sound is good and mostly the radio can hear and talk as good as any CB or ham radio I have owned. I dont have any calibrated test gear but I believe it meets its published specifications. How-some-ever, the operation and display to have some curious faults. The RF control doesnt exist in the sense that the operators manual describes. The RF control is described in operation in two different ways in the operators manual, one way on page E-5 and another way on page E-10. The button depresses on the RF gain and a small indicator lights up with the indication of LOCAL, comeing on in the upper left hand corner of the display section of the front panel. This indicator isnt mentioned in the manual. There is no corresponding LED coming on and variability using the Channel Selector Switch as the manual describes for the RF control, rather its just a sort of On and Off with the RF gain at maximum all the time when not in LOCAL. The AGC circuit in the radio seems to work well though and the radio is very sensitive on receive. The display has 7 colors you can select which is real fine if you have time to play with this while driving, which would have about the same result as texting while driving, probably resulting in a bad car wreck. First and foremost, you cant see the indicators in the daytime. Any ambient sunlight washes out the display and you will be lucky to see the channel you are on with the settings on high brightness and maximum contrast. I like the Green setting but in fact I dont really care. I was using a PRO505 before and it had Yellow I think and was very readable in daylight. The display is dazzling at night and maybe I should mount two of these radios, one under each front wheel well of my car, for extra bling. I havent been able to get the scan to work yet, so perhaps it really does, but I will work on that with the car parked this weekend. All of this sort of leads up to the final problem which is the method in which the operator gets to most of the settings. The MENU/OK and SELECTOR knob combined with the other assorted buttons and contortions make this a pain-in-the-butt radio to set up. I suspect some young software guy who doesnt operate mobile CB, did the semi-demi-drop-down menu for this radio. Who else but a nerd-bird would think that pressing the PTT while the function button for MIC GAIN was activated for 5 seconds after pressing, and you are scrambling to run the SELECTOR knob to the desired MIC GAIN setting, would be a cool thing to do? So overall I would again say its a good radio but Uniden messed up on this one when they rushed it to market. I have read a few reviews and it is total microcomputer controlled and no schematics or service manual are available. You cant fix it and you cant mess with it, so Uniden has you by the proverbial (fill in as appropriate). Therefore I am thinking of removing the 980SSB from the car just as soon as the Galaxy 959 AM/SSB unit arrives. I will use the 980SSB as a base station rig. Probably will never take the top off until one day the microprocessor goes nuts and then just to look at all those surface mount parts. I design microprocessor driven systems plus a lot of homebrew RF, so this aint my first rodeo.