Hey all, this is a great forum and I have been searching thru the threads for some help. I own a retail garden center and purchased 4 BPR 40 mag one radios two seasons ago and now they are not working well at all. Intermittant reception, sometimes no reception. These are vhf and I probably should have gone with uhf although they worked pretty well when we first got them. At $200 apiece, I was expecting them to last a while.
Should I try and have these repaired or get something different? Money is kind of an issue. We have a two acre nursery and need to communicate from our 1200 sq. ft metal building to the crew in the nursery yard. There are also two greenhouses and a couple of storage buildings on site as well. Thanks for any suggestions.
Itâs very strange that you would have reduced reception on all 4 radios. I could see one or maybe two becoming defective, but itâs unlikely that all 4 would. Has anything about the environment that youâre using the radios in changed? For example, are you using them more inside now or do you have more buildings than you did two seasons ago?
If nothing else has changed, I think your most likely culprit is the battery. Thatâs something that would degrade at about the same rate on all radios, and transmit power will definitely suffer on weak batteries. Have you seen any other issues with battery life?
Thanks for the reply. I checked my records and the radios were purchased in 2009, so a little older than I suspected. Also, we did start having issues with one radio first, which we marked with tape and use only if necessary. And we are having what i suspect are battery issues with one of the others. I was thinking of purchasing new batteries and seeing if that helped. My hesitancy was that I didnât want to waste money if the radioâs were going to have to be replaced. As for the environment, that has stayed the same. I am also needing to add a couple of radios to the fleet and that adds to the equation as well.
Just a follow up on batteries. Can i replace my batteries with a lithium ion? Would that be compatible with the bpr40 series and work with the stock charger? Thanks
From what Iâm seeing, the standard charger that is included with the BPR40 radio is âtri-chemistryâ, which means it will charge both the NiMH (PMNN4071AR) and Lithium (PMNN4075AR) batteries. Iâm not sure if this is the charger that was shipping with the radios in 2009, however, so you may just want to check your label and make sure your charger part number is PMLN5048AR. If you have something different, post it here and Iâll check on it for you.
As far as which battery to get, that really depends on how long you plan on having the radios. There is a $14 difference in the price of the batteries, so if you plan on keeping the radios for a couple of more years then I think it is worth it to go with the lithium ones.
The charger # is PMLN5041A. Thanks.
That one is tri-chemistry as well, so you should be fine with either lithium or NiMH.
Thanks for your help. I just ordered some batteries from the link you posted. Hopefully, this will solve the problems. The radios seem to work fine in the morning and then go downhill as the day progresses. So batteries may be all I need. Thanks again for all the help.
Thanks for the order! Just to make sure youâre aware, the link I posted was to the NiMH version. If youâd prefer the lithium I can special order those ($36.99 each) but theyâll take a couple of days to get here.
Either way, please come back when they arrive and let us know if it fixed your problem!
Will do!
It has been my experience that UHF works better then VHF inside of a building.
You canât expect that radio signal to travel through steel buildings and concrete structurs and go everywhere.
The VHF is better outdoors where you are looking at trying to get more range, but then again - your range is going to be dependant upon the enviroment in which you use them.
Instead of trying to do self diagnosis - why not take your radios to a two way shop and have them checked out. Then you will know if the batteries are bad or if you have some other issue.
If you broke your leg, you wouldnât go on the internet and ask for advice or call the doctor on the phone and say Doc - what is wrong with me? - you would go to a hospital and get advice from a doctor after he did some tests and took some X rays.
You donât save money when you try to do things yourself and be cheapâŚ
I donât know if you will check back to this forum or not, but if you do let me recommend something to you. I have noticed that people tend to use the charger as a radio holder also, leaving it in the charger all day. Once the battery is charged take the radio out of the charger and sit (or lay) it to the side if no one is using it. The current flow of the charger is âcookingâ the chemicals in the battery. Like a pot of chili on the stove top, if you leave it there long enough it will cook down to nothing. Chargers have a charging cycle for a reason.