PSR500 hosed?

[GrumpyAeroGuy]

Had the scanner plugged in and "on " all night.

Running on Rat Shack Enercell rechargable batteries... GLobal menu set to NiMH for the "battery setting".

Sometime early morning, the electric went out. Woke up to a powerless house and a scanner that appeared "off", eventhough it was powered on (though plugged into the charger which was plugged into a dead outlet).

Turned it off, disconnected it, and powered it up disconnected from the wall charger (batteries only).

It hasn't been behaving the same ever since--- at least it seems that way. On a normally busy analog 800 trunk system (my counties), I am not picking up everything, the "T" symbol in the display is in a "rapid flash" mode.

It IS possible that the county is having radio issues or are in fail-soft, but it seems like the china cabinet is rattled. I called the fire house (used to run from there for years--- they said their radios appear to be normal).

It (PSR500) is working, but seems like it is operating in a "degraded" state somehow. I wish I could me more specific, but this is what it is.

Any wisdom? Is there a way to "re-boot" it from the ground up and re-load the config from Win500? SHould that even matter?

Other systems I monitor appear to be operating consistently. Just really wierd.

I am open to any of the wisdom and experience out there......

 

[Rt169Radio]

Maybe there was a quick power surge (power came on quick and shut off quick) and it did something to the scanner?

 

[dcr_inc]

Is there a G or att in the display window?..

Could be that the attenuator is turned on..If the ATT is on.. push the ATT button to turn it off...
If the G is on.. Push FUNC then ATT to turn it off..

If that isn't it, I would reprogram it.. Maybe the memory is corrupted

 

[ibagli]

If the G is on.. Push FUNC then ATT to turn it off..

There's no reason to do this. The G just indicates that the attenuator is in global mode, not that it's activated.

 

[RKG]

I don't think you did anything to your radio.

When the external power plug is inserted, it opens the circuit by which the batteries can power the radio. So when the juice died with the plug was still in, the radio was, in fact, off.

Sometimes just removing the external plug doesn't turn the radio on; this is a software glitch (based on reading the software presence of external power at power up, and not after). Just cycle the Pwr/Vol switch off and on, and the radio should now be running on batteries.

If the LOOP caused the trunked system to go into FailSoft mode, your radio will see the FailSoft beacon on the control channel, but it will not hear any traffic on the voice channels because the control channel will not send any channel grant OSWs to steer your radio to the voice channels. The system subscribers, however, will switch to their assigned voice channel for conventional repeater operation.

 

[GrumpyAeroGuy]

Attenuator was off. Fixing to reload the VScanner file for this set-up. I'll report back. Seems to be acting fairly normal now.

Sure seems like the blackout rattled the PSR500's cage a little.... lol

 

[GrumpyAeroGuy]

ok, reloaded VS config...seems ok for now. Maybe a few electrons got scambled...(???)

 

[N1BHH]

You should never, ever, never, ever leave a radio plugged in while charging batteries. If you fall asleep there could be a catastrophic failure situation, in other words, a brick. The batteries will not charge properly and will also loose their lifetime usage. But please charge the batteries externally.

I am glad your radio is okay.