[ICOM] IC-PCR1500 Signal Dropping Out (Corrected)

[Terry Schieler]

Thanks to some good input from Gary, K8IZ, and with a bit of detective work,
I was able to track down the gremlin causing this problem.

 

I found that this problem only occurred when in the scan mode.  Never when
manually held on a channel.  After a while I noticed (as mentioned earlier)
that there seemed to be a timing issue where the problem seemed to occur
only some time into a lengthy dispatch.  Never brief transmissions.  I
started timing it.  Sure enough, it was exactly 15 seconds from the start of
the transmission that the signal dropped and the scan resumed by itself.
Every time.

 

Looking back through the manual there is a section on Scan Resume Condition.
It gives four options and they are worded kind of strangely:

 

 SCP-2  Scan pauses until the signal disappears than then resumes 2 seconds
later.  (This is what the receiver had always been set to).

SCt-15  Scan pauses 15 sec. while receiving a signal.  (It doesn't state the
obvious."then resumes scanning by itself")

SCt-10  Scan pauses 10 sec. while receiving a signal.

SCt-5  Scan pauses 5 sec. while receiving a signal.

 

The second option was the dead giveaway.  So I went out to the car and
stepped through to that setting.  It was set to SCt-15.  It simply paused 15
seconds on a transmission then moved on whether you were ready to go or not.
Hard to imagine a need for that option, but it's there.  I reset it to SCR-2
and everything is normal again.

 

Apparently, when I reprogrammed those couple of extra channels into the RX
last week, something caused the Scan Resume Condition to default back to the
factory setting of SCt-15 (15 sec.).

 

Thanks to Gary and any others who pondered on this problem with me.

 

73, Terry  W0FM