Anyone have problems Scout UHF magnetic switch?

[redbird1]

I have a pair of Scout UHF TXs new this year (purchased from Mike’s Falconry along with a UHF reciever). Both have shown intermittent problems with the magnetic on/off switch - now one of the switches has failed completely. I have removed the battery, but honestly, that is a pain - the magnetic on/off is one of my favorite features. Has anyone else experienced this? My Marshall 216 Scouts were bullet proof (maybe a bad batch of magnetic switches?).

I trust Marshall’s customer service to take care of me, but I don’t want to fly my cast without TXs while I send them back for repair/replacement. I will probably call them next week, but I am really not sure what to do.

Anyone else experience this problem? What did you do?

[goshawkr]

Hi Mike.

I dont have a UHF scout, but I do have two VHF scouts. One of my Scout Tx is 8 or so years old, the other is 7. On one of these, dont recall which, I had intermittent problems with the magnetic switch. I did not recognize this was the case right away though. I would go to turn on the transmitter and find it already beeping and assumed I had forgotten to turn it off which sometimes happens. My normal routine is to turn on the transmitter right after I weigh, and prior to loading. I do a reciever and transmitter check when loading the truck, and again just before pulling the bird out of the truck. There were times that when I was ready to start hunting and get the bird out that I was surprised to find the transmitter was off, and I wrote that off as having forgotten to turn the Tx on when loading.

Then one fine day my normally steady goshawk blitzed out on me and took off for a stand of trees about a mile from where I was hunting. I saw where she went, so I was not at all concerned until I took the dogs back to the truck and got out the receiver and found that the Tx had turned off. Finding a goshawk in a small stand of trees can be a challenge, especially when they do not want to be found, but this stand was a few score acres in size. I did not quite panic, but came pretty close. After about 30 minutes of searching, I tried the receiver again and got a signal and walked right to her and got her back.

Dont #$@$# around with an intermittent magnetic switch (or any other method of turning on a Tx). Send it in for service as soon as you notice that.

And Marshal gave me top notch service when they replaced the switch. I seem to recall it was out of the warrantee period and that I was not charged for the service. While they were working on it, I also had them program the Tx for maximum battery life by increasing the time between pulses as much as they could and by shortening the pulse length as short as they could. For a Tx for a hawk, that was a good move. It did not affect my speed locating a signal at all, and my batteries now last about 4 months.

[redbird1]

Thanks for the input, Geoff. I also like the idea of getting the beep intervals customized to increase battery life (this reduction was the single nagging issue that caused me to delay switching to UHF for so long). When I do get the TXs serviced, I will inquire about this. I really cannot hunt with a single bird. Aside from the difficulty in taking kills successfully that a single bird encounters due to the persistent leaf cover down here, I track my team mostly by sound (they are not visible for much of the hunt). It takes me three years to build a reliable team (to my standards) from scratch - losing one bird (or both) has a much higher cost at this stage in my life - emotional attachment and financial value aside, these hunting years are precious. Worth doing whatever I can to protect and preserve my team.

[FredFogg]

I have a couple UHF Micro's with the same problem. As was said, sending back to Marshall is the best bet. But I was told by Marshall that if your spring gets magnetized but you accidently hitting the spring with the magnet, it will affect the on/off. I pulled my springs off and demagnetized them and it works fine now.

[redbird1]

Fred, gotta ask, wothout a degauzer (I don’t have one handy) how did you demagnetize your springs?

[rkumetz]

Fred, gotta ask, wothout a degauzer (I don’t have one handy) how did you demagnetize your springs?

Try a screwdriver magnetizer / demagnetizer though it may be less expensive to buy a new spring unless you or someone you know own one.

[FredFogg]

I bought this one at O'Reilly Auto Parts for a few bucks. Just run the spring through the demagnitizer.

https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/performance-tool-4601/tools---equipment-16488/tools-17919/mechanics-tools-16816/engine-tools-17994/performance-tool-magnetizer-demagnetizer/w471/4614292?q=demagnetizer