Sent Pro-197 in for repairs

[wise871]

Over the last few days I noticed my trusty old (Dec 2008) Pro-197 was acting kind of strange. It wasn’t pulling in the signals or holding on control channels “CC” like it use to. On the real close sites it would get a strong CC and pick up the talkgroups but it wouldn’t release the talkgroup after the transmission was completed. I check my squelch settings and programming and everything looked good. When the 197 would show a talkgroup it would hold and show a voice channel but no voice. If I turned up the volume, I could hear a faint control channel tone in the background. Once I hit scan it would resume and repeat the whole process again.

My 197 seems like it was death, not scanning and not working 100%. Just to make sure it wasn’t my radio, I connected my Pro-106 to the same connection. Both radios are connected to a multicoupler. When I hooked up the 106 to the same connection, it came to life. It was pulling in the signals and scanning like a bandit. As soon as I put the 197 back in same location, it was quite. Both radios are programmed and operated exactly the same. I've been using the 197 for 3+ years so I'm familiar with its operations

So off to radio shack to have my 197 sent in for a checkup and repairs. I reported that the scanner lost its sensitivity and no longer pulling in the signals like before. I also wrote up the volume knob for having a scratchy sound when I first turn it on. Others have reported this problem about lack of lube in the volume solenoid.

Does anyone know how long the turnaround normally is? I read that RS will due a full checkup on it. My repair slip says it’s going to the service center in Jacksonville Florida. I live in Florida so that is right down the road (5 hrs) for me. The 197 is going out today. I can’t wait to get it back.

 

[r_eugene1]

From my experience with RS repair time (turn around) could be approximately 10-15 days. A scanner I had repaired a few years back was 10 days, and it was shipped from Ohio to be repaired.

 

[puzzleriddle]

Depending on where you I would say as long as 3 weeks... but I am in Bama & they shipped it to FT Worth, TX I think.. BE very aware & make sure your local shack actually mails it of. Mine sat in the store room a week or so before it was mailed.... Many thanks to Doug here on RR that helped me out & got things moving.

 

[icom1020]

My 197 bit the dust as far as the VHF front end sens is concerned. I sent it in to G&G as they were considered the best over RS. His opinion is the front end is too difficult to get at, lots of epoxy surrounding it and therefore not worth attempting to break it open.

He did the best he could and didn't charge me anything to diagnose or replace a few parts and send back. (He had it for almost 3 months but we always stayed in contact and he really wanted to solve this) It was my own fault as I had it too close to another transmitting radio but the 800 still works like it always did, so I'm not out totally. I bought a 396xt in the meantime.

 

[wise871]

Thanks for the feedback. I've never had the 197 near another transmitter so I don't know what caused the problem. My main issue was in the UHF bands, especially with trunk systems. Again, with the 106 side by side with same connection to multicoupler, the 106 smoked the 197 on UHF. Well at least they sent it to a nearby repair facility. I figure they will either fix it, replace it, or say I’m out of luck. If all else fails, I’ll wait for the next sale.

 

[GTO_04]

It took about 3 weeks when I had to send my Pro-96 in for repair. Not too bad IMHO.

GTO_04

 

[wise871]

So far my experience has been great. The service center had received the scanner the next day and today I got called and talked to the tech doing the repairs. Talk about fast service. He is going to run some additional checks and let me know what he comes up with.