Taking the PRO-164 Mobile - How is yours?

[Smerri]

My father had mentioned to me his PRO-164 was not performing all that well while he had it in his car. I just did a test run with it, using the Valor PMM3B Mag Mount as well as the Diamond RH77CA and just did some laps up Route 95. It seemed that it was hit or miss with the frequencies. Sometimes they were fine, and others they were barely existent (constant skipping with barely any audio). Just a 6-7 mile stretch of Rt. 95 too.

Tried Attenuation, Global Attenuation and that just made it worse. I don't live in a city (More a suburban/rural area) and the frequencies I was listening to were all analog and fell in the 450-480 mHz range.

Basically wondering how your PRO-164 does when you have it mobile, what antenna set up are you using, and have you ever experienced any problems like this (and if so how did you solve them).

For comparison, my BR330T which I take mobile (and can use the same antenna options) will not experience these problems on all the same frequencies. I really like the PRO-164 and am hoping their is a simple solution for this.

Thanks.

 

[Caesar]

i live in the city, smaller city, but a city none the less... I had a pro-164 and i felt that there was to much RF in the air and created an overload on the receiver in which i had bad reception when using the radio, especially with the roof mount antenna on the truck. A rubber duck worked best but was still overloading the radio, attenuation worked some but did not solve the problem. The problem was finally fixed by swapping the radio for a br330t ;-)

 

[Smerri]

Damn. It works perfect in my house, but on the road not as good.

 

[walter900]

All is not lost here... The Radio Shack stuby "Race Antenna" (Catalog #20-288) works great for taming high RF enviorment. Give it a try.

 

[Smerri]

All is not lost here... The Radio Shack stuby "Race Antenna" (Catalog #20-288) works great for taming high RF enviorment. Give it a try.

Gee I never even thought as that as an alternative. I will have to check that out. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[1979lee]

Mine did the same thing, and i returned it and got another one, it did it to so i got a refund, a total waste of a scanner.. it seemed very cheaply made too.
a warning to all DO NOT BUY A RADIO SHACK PRO164 Handheld scanner.

 

[hcpholder]

I've never had a problem with my Pro-164. I use the standard antenna that came with the radio. I live in a fairly large city and get good reception with it in the car. Even out on the open road up to 30 and 40 miles away. Go figure!