Hi, Never posted here before, and I am pretty new to scanners. I've wanted one since I was in Jr High, and finally got around to buying. I planned to get it for scanning air traffic for mil air and air shows. I got a Radio Shack Pro 97 from Scanners Unlimited before Glen announced the closing. I used it for a few weeks, but was reading a lot and really liked a lot of the PSR 500 features, such as the LED, options for the backlighting, different memory structiore, and virtual scanner memory.
So I was going to trade my Pro 97 up to the PSR 500, but then found out that Glen was closing. Long story short I ended up with the floor model of the PSR 500, serial number 1007. I like the radio, but it seems to be behaving differently from the Pro 97 in a few ways.
Randomly, for some reason the scanner just locks on to a random frequency and stays there. It makes a hissing sound, as if the squelch is totall open. I try to adjust the squelch, but it has no effect. The sound persists. I even checked the manual and where it says to select the "tune" and try to adjust the squelch but it still persisted when I turned the squelch all the way clockwise to all the way counter clockwise. If I hit the up arrow, to make it continue scanning, it just locks onto another frequency. The signal is usually very low, like 1 bar when it locks in.
At first I couldn't figure out what was causing it. I turned off the scanner, left it for a while and turned it on again and it was fine. After some testing, I was able to narrow down when the scanner does it.
1. Whenever the scanner is near my laptop or desktop computer (which is where I work, and where I want to be listening to it.) When I walk away the scanner starts behaving normally, although sometimes I have to hit the up arrow to get it scanning again.
2. Whenever it is connected to the PC via the USB cable it does it. When the cable is removed it stops
3. Whenever it's plugged into the charger, (in the car or in the house) it does it.
Other times the scanner is fine, and actually does a very good job. It picks up my local mil air traffic that the Pro 97 didn't. But the problems mentioned above make it kind of hard to really get what I had hoped for out of the scanner.
I had thought maybe the problems were due to older firmware, so I went to the GRE website and per the instructions upgraded the CPU and DSP to the latest release. This didn't help it.
I also completely reset the scanner to the factory defaults, using both of the methods in the manual. Still does the same thing.
Has anyone seen anything like this? Is this normal for this scanner? Any suggestions on how to fix it? I am wondering if the older models had some kind of issue that may have been fixed in later versions of the scanner.
Thanks in advance for your assistance..
Jon
So I was going to trade my Pro 97 up to the PSR 500, but then found out that Glen was closing. Long story short I ended up with the floor model of the PSR 500, serial number 1007. I like the radio, but it seems to be behaving differently from the Pro 97 in a few ways.
Randomly, for some reason the scanner just locks on to a random frequency and stays there. It makes a hissing sound, as if the squelch is totall open. I try to adjust the squelch, but it has no effect. The sound persists. I even checked the manual and where it says to select the "tune" and try to adjust the squelch but it still persisted when I turned the squelch all the way clockwise to all the way counter clockwise. If I hit the up arrow, to make it continue scanning, it just locks onto another frequency. The signal is usually very low, like 1 bar when it locks in.
At first I couldn't figure out what was causing it. I turned off the scanner, left it for a while and turned it on again and it was fine. After some testing, I was able to narrow down when the scanner does it.
1. Whenever the scanner is near my laptop or desktop computer (which is where I work, and where I want to be listening to it.) When I walk away the scanner starts behaving normally, although sometimes I have to hit the up arrow to get it scanning again.
2. Whenever it is connected to the PC via the USB cable it does it. When the cable is removed it stops
3. Whenever it's plugged into the charger, (in the car or in the house) it does it.
Other times the scanner is fine, and actually does a very good job. It picks up my local mil air traffic that the Pro 97 didn't. But the problems mentioned above make it kind of hard to really get what I had hoped for out of the scanner.
I had thought maybe the problems were due to older firmware, so I went to the GRE website and per the instructions upgraded the CPU and DSP to the latest release. This didn't help it.
I also completely reset the scanner to the factory defaults, using both of the methods in the manual. Still does the same thing.
Has anyone seen anything like this? Is this normal for this scanner? Any suggestions on how to fix it? I am wondering if the older models had some kind of issue that may have been fixed in later versions of the scanner.
Thanks in advance for your assistance..
Jon