Hi

My Drake R8B tuning sometimes gets lost when I spin the knob fast.
I'll be going up 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.2 See? I expect this is a pretty
common prob.

Ok so unit is going to go back to Drake for fix and I will tell them to
go thru whole unit and check it out.

Any idea what they will charge me for this?

regards,
Bob

It's the crappy mechanical tuning encoder that the tuning knob
operates. Drake should have stayed with the higher quality optical
encoder like the old R-8 had. This problem is common in the SW-2 also
because it uses the same encoder.

Frank

wrote:

It's the crappy mechanical tuning encoder that the tuning knob
operates. Drake should have stayed with the higher quality optical
encoder like the old R-8 had. This problem is common in the SW-2 also
because it uses the same encoder.

Frank

Drake told me they had a problem with the optical encoder and that's why
they changed to the mechanical one. Replacing the mechanical encoder is
pretty easy for someone with basic electronics skills. The part costs
less than $20. Part # is 3260012

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Sweet price,

I can get one of the technicians at work to fix for me.

regards,
Bob

wrote:
Sweet price,

I can get one of the technicians at work to fix for me.

regards,
Bob


If you've got to replace it, you might see what it would cost to change
to an optical one.

My guess is you could get one heck of a nice one for under $50.

wrote:

Sweet price,

I can get one of the technicians at work to fix for me.

regards,
Bob

BTW- You don't really need the small PC board that comes with the
encoder. You can remove the encoder from the board and solder the three
wires coming from the connector plug directly to the pins on the
encoder. Keep track of which wires go to each pin on the encoder before
you remove it from the PC board.

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Drake changed to the mechanical encoder because it was cheaper!

Frank

Digi-Key used to have a Grayhill optical encoder in the 30 dollar range. The
mod should be pretty easy. You just need to connect it to a source of +5V
and probably remove the pullup resistors that are connected to the Up/Down
tune lines.

Pete

wrote in message
oups.com...
Drake changed to the mechanical encoder because it was cheaper!

Frank

Ok thanks everybody for input. I just sent Drake Email to see what
kind of service they offer. I would like whole unit checked out soup
to nuts. I want to make sure running AOK to present config and so
forth. Unit is very nice and I will probably keep, but if I decide to
sell I would like to tell potential owner that factory has recently
blessed unit.

73
Bob
N9NEO

wrote:

Hi

My Drake R8B tuning sometimes gets lost when I spin the knob fast.
I'll be going up 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 7.2 See? I expect this is a pretty
common prob.

Ok so unit is going to go back to Drake for fix and I will tell them to
go thru whole unit and check it out.

Any idea what they will charge me for this?

It's a fairly easy fix and if you can do it yourself I'd recommend that as a
start, as it's not difficult to do as long as one feels comfortable about
tearing into the receiver.

The part is available from Drake and perhaps from other sources as well.

As for determining if there are other issues with the radio perhaps you might
compare reception with any other equipment you might have.

Then if there are problems you might send it in to Drake.

dxAce
Michigan
USA