Batboard

Hello all! As the title suggests, I have a Range 3 Spectra, for 450-490mhz or whatever that split is... I did the VCO stripline mod by using a blob of solder and a short bit of wire to extend the stripline a little past the laser cut marks, put it all back together, and it was working like a charm for a while, all the way down to 442 for RX. I then later reprogrammed it, and now I get a FAIL 001 on RX for any channel below 446 (446.0 is the lowest channel I have programmed in that doesn't give the error, 444.975 the highest that does). So I figured, maybe the mod came undone somehow? I tried reflowing it, extending it further, a number of things, and I still get a FAIL 001!

What gives?!? I was talking on it in the morning, reprogrammed it with the laptop at noon, and FAIL 001 in the afternoon. Why would reprogramming do that?

There could be other causes for the FAIL001. Cap leakage and or damage for one.

Your tuning data got corrupted. Go through the vco board replacement process.

Bill_G wrote:Your tuning data got corrupted. Go through the vco board replacement process.

I would NOT recommend doing that. I doubt the values got corrupted.
The Tuning Data is the Deviation Compensation, and Deviation Calibration settings. It requires the use of a calibrated FM Modulation Scope, like in a service monitor.

He can save the current values without changing anything. When I get fail 001 after touching the programming, that's what I do just to see if it will recover. After that I do the alignment for real, but it's not often I need to change anything. He's safe to try it. I'd be interested in knowing if he read-edited -wrote to the radio, or if he blew an archive in and got the failure. I've never gotten a fail 001 with the read-edit-write process, but get them often when loading an archive.

I read the codeplug from that radio, edited it, and re-wrote it back to the radio.

I forgot to mention in the OP that I replaced all the caps already with Panasonic HD electrolytics.

OK, I re-read and re-wrote the radio on a slower computer, and it seemed to fix it! The computer used before was something like a 1.8ghz laptop, which was probably the culprit that corrupted just the tuning data, and not the rest of the codeplug.

maxkelley_kc2spy wrote:OK, I re-read and re-wrote the radio on a slower computer, and it seemed to fix it! The computer used before was something like a 1.8ghz laptop, which was probably the culprit that corrupted just the tuning data, and not the rest of the codeplug.

Ya can't use that fast of a computer to program a Spectra with. How does it feel to shoot yourself in the foot? Been
there and done that myself a few times. Know how it feels.

Jim