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.