6 Visars display Z88 when keyed

[kenolle]

I just aquired 6 Visars that when keyed and lockdisplay Z88 up transmitting w/o a tx led. I have already read that bad batteries can cause Z88 as well as bad traces, all radios on the same channel rx audio along with a machine gun like data noise and feedback until the keyed radio is turned off. I broke out my counter and are on 163, 165 and 166mhz so after reading a bit it appears they are most probably federal, question is has anyone experienced this? All batteries appear to be good and I only have a gang charger that goes green PDQ after radios are inserted, I am currently waiting for them to go dead and recharge to see what happens there as this may be a bad charger or bad batts, any help appreciated, Ken

[RadioSouth]

Pretty hard to do any testing without a good known battery. Cycling from red to green quickly is usually an indication the battery is no good. Hopefully the batteries are the culprit and should be the 1st thing to check.

[kenolle]

I just noticed that I wasnt completely clear on my original post. The radios turn on fine, they show Z88, then beep and show 01, then when keyed the tx led lights for a second and the display goes to Z88 and the radio continuosly is transmitting a data like sound along with audio until it is turned off. I just noticed that two of the radios had Z88 in the display after being on all night, when I turned them off and back on the Z88 appeared and would not go away, im thinking thats the low batt Z88 error, what I have happening with the other units is a bit different.. I plugged the two showing Z88 this morning into the charger and had a green led in less than a minute, pluggged the rest into the charger that were still displaying channels and same thing, charger went green in about a minute, looks like a bad charger to me, what do you think? Ken

[Josh]

"Z88" would be an illumination of all the segments of the LCD display, the 'Z' is the scan icon, the 88 is all segments of the 2 character numeric display.

A good radio will show this during the power up cycle, along with a Green steady LED. If the power up beep is enabled, that'll be heard too. If there's a low battery and the low battery beep is enabled, you may hear that as well.

What's the model number of your units?
-Josh

[kenolle]

H05KDD9AA4BN Ken

[Pj]

Sounds like batteries issues as well. I've had radios do the exact same thing under low voltage issues. The radio (depending on make/model) will just keep cycling the way you describe until the battery is swapped out or the proper voltage returns.

[kenolle]

I have 3 dual chargers on the way, will wait until I have them to verify because the charger is going green way too quickly on all radios, leads me to think its not charging properly. Thanks for your input, Ken

[wavetar]

If the charger is powering on & giving charging indications, it's highly unlikely the charger is at fault. What's the date code on the batteries? I can pretty well guarantee you have a batch of 10 year old crap batteries. The radios themselves may indeed have some issues of their own since the Visar is a troubled model, but everything you've posted indicates battery issues to me.