Pro 197 no audio

[jaybw54]

Hello all, this is my first time here. Nice place you have here.

I hope you can help. I have a Pro 197 that I’m have trouble with, not sure if it’s the unit or me.

I purchased this radio used about 8 or 10 years ago, I don’t recall if I had issues with it then, but something made me loose interest in it. I would now like to get this scanner up and running, so I got my ARC 500 subscription going and also my Radio Reference premium membership.

I downloaded all of the public service frequencies for Summit County Ohio. (where I live). Everything worked great, but I have a big issue. When scanning, I get great signal strength on all frequencies, but no modulation. (Audio). When going to the NOAA station, same thing but I can hear the station, but barely. Volume and squelch have no effect. (They're normal). I'm using a rooftop antenna. Switching out the antenna with the telescoping one that came with the unit makes no difference.

I probably missed something really simple. Any idea what that might be?

 

[tvengr]

Try plugging in headphones or an external speaker. Sitting all those years, the switch on the headphone jack may be corroded and disabling the speaker. Work a plug in and out of the headphone jack several times and see if that makes a difference.

 

[k7xta]

tvengr makes a good suggestion.
I had a similar problem on one of my rigs.
When I worked a headphone plug in and out a few times, I put a little aerosal contact cleaner on it first. Worked fine ever since.

 

[jaybw54]

Excellent idea! I also used a little shot of contact cleaner and the plug to my headphones. I had high hopes, but it didn't work. Thank you for the suggestions.

 

[tvengr]

Excellent idea! I also used a little shot of contact cleaner and the plug to my headphones. I had high hopes, but it didn't work. Thank you for the suggestions.

I have ARC500. Please attach your programming file and I will check it for problems. You will need to right click on the file and Send to Compressed (zipped) folder to be able to attach it. Click on Attach files and Open the zipped file. I replaced the audio output IC in a couple of Pro-197's. If the IC has shorted, it will be very hot and the large resistors around it will be discolored.

 

[jaybw54]

Wow, Please excuse me but I've never done this before and everything that I've tried isn't working. I have the file in ARC, but I'm lot finding where I can zip it.

 

[jaybw54]

I think I got it. Please try this.

 

[tvengr]

You have 3 groups of the same 10 conventional frequencies. You can delete the last 20 frequencies (11-30) You do not have any trunked systems. Per the database:

Ohio MARCS-IP: Multi-Agency Radio Communications Trunking System, Statewide, Ohio - Scanner Frequencies (radioreference.com)
Project 25 Phase I Most agencies use this system for all traffic

There is a single site for Summit County. Scroll down to the Summit County talkgroups and you will see what you are missing. Add the trunked system to the existing 10 conventional frequencies in the ARC500 file. When you update the scanner with ARC500, it will overwrite all 20 scan lists in the scanner. You cannot just add to what is already in the scanner.

 

[tvengr]

You can also receive District 3 of the Ohio State Highway Patrol. I am still concerned that you cannot hear any audio on the weather frequenciies. You may have a problem other than programming. You should at least hear noise when you open the squelch.

 

[Swipesy]

jaybw54 I cannot address your issue of whether or not your scanner has a hardware issue but the communities you are trying to listen to in your Conventional list have for the most part migrated over to the MARCS system. Thus you need to setup the MARCS System in your radio. Nothwithstanding what others have told you about what to setup, which is incorrect, depending on your location you may need to setup MARCS Cuyahoga County, Geauga County as well as Summit Towers. Those communities you are trying to hear sometimes are heard on Cuyahoga and Geauga Towers.

While I use WIN500 and PSREdit and not ARC500 I can help you get the MARCS System setup correctly, since I listen to daily those communities you are trying to listen to.

The other issue you may in counter depending on your location is simulcast distortion which can cause your radio to be garble and/or deaf. Once you determine if you do or do not have a hardware speaker issue you can proceed.

 

[tvengr]

depending on your location you may need to setup MARCS Cuyahoga County, Geauga County as well as Summit Towers. Those communities you are trying to hear sometimes are heard on Cuyahoga and Geauga Towers.

Thanks for the update. Not being a local, I am not privy to that information.

 

[Ronaldski]

It might be and likely Summit no longer uses those frequencies you have.

I dont have arc500, but PSREdit500. It comes with a 30 day free trial. Download PSREdit500

I normally never do a programming file for people, but after I saw what was in the file you supplied... it was OMG.
In doing it for people they don't learn anything, but I get it that it's not easy for the novice.

Yes as mentioned what you have is all and ONLY analog on a digital trunk scanner and what is there is triplicated.
Frustrating to me as I have seen this before many times, where using a high priced digital trunking radio just for only analog.

I see Summit is simulcast - Multiple towers same frequencies and talkgroups that the radio doesnt do well with so I put the scanlist 3 on.

So here is what I came up with,
Scanlists
1 is Summit 911 analog
2 is summit digital
3 Summit digital with attenuator on
4 Summit Public works
5 Airport

 

[jaybw54]

WOW! Thank you all for sharing your wisdom and expertise. I believe that I may have found the cause of my audio issue. It seems that it may be an antenna, coax, connector issue. As soon as I can, I will be rebuilding all of it, and hopefully I will be able too start learning about programming.
Ronaldski, I really appreciate your time and effort to try to get me straightened out on this. I wish there was a "Scanners For Dummies" book available. I'm glad that there patient people in this forum. Thank You all! As soon as I get my hardware corrected, I'll be back.

 

[Swipesy]

jaybw54 once you are ready to program Summit County into your scanner you may want to consider creating at least 2 Scanlists that split Summiit into a Summit North and a Summit South lists. Summit is very robust and there is non stop action. As a result you miss some of the action while the radio is busy stopping on many active Talkgroups. Also, the city of Akron police and fire are mostly encrypted so you can't hear voice.

In my North Summit I have Hudson, Sagamore, Macedonia, Northfield, Stow and Twinsburg. The South is everything else.

 

[jaybw54]

Thank you for your help. I just ordered a new antenna tonight, I hope to get this thing up and running asap. In the mean time, I may put the oem desktop antenna on the radio and start my attempt at programming. I'm sure I'll be back with questions.

 

[Swipesy]

Thank you for your help. I just ordered a new antenna tonight, I hope to get this thing up and running asap. In the mean time, I may put the oem desktop antenna on the radio and start my attempt at programming. I'm sure I'll be back with questions.

I still use my GRE PSR 500 on Summit and it works well. I have custom Alpha Tags for all the Talkgroups. Unfortunately the 500 and your 197 have limited numbers of objects that you can program so you can't load too many RID's to supplement the TG's. That is the nice thing about my Whistler SD card radios that their is very little limitations on programming objects.