Scanner Greats, Realistic PRO-2006 comes in for Refurb.
Apr 29, 2018 2:26:36 GMT 1
Samba, Airbus, and 2 more like this
Post by radiostationx on Apr 29, 2018 2:26:36 GMT 1
Realistic Pro-2006 Unit : B "experimental"
One of the golden greats of 1990s scanner radios the Realistic Pro-2006 was made for Radio Shack/Tandy by General Research Electronics Inc (GRE) Japan and designed and assembled in their factory in Chiba Prefecture.
To quote radio reference.com
"The Pro-2006 is considered by many to be the best scanner ever produced in terms of sensitivity and selectivity."
This model has great design and is much loved by airband fans due to its brilliant AM performance , no gaps coverage of both Civil and Military airband and beyond from 25mhz up to 1.3ghz.
It has top quality components which very interestingly are a mix of traditional/older THT (Through Hole Technology) mounted components and SMD (Surface Mount Devices) like the ones found in iphones and the like today.
An oldie, but a goodie !
History
In the early days of SMD production, Japan was the major player.
Nobody, but Nobody even came close.
Unlike today, SMDs were very expensive. They offered manufacturers the advantage of making their final products much smaller . For example , A capacitor or resistor could be made 1/20th of the size of a regular (THT) one. The SMDs could be glue mounted on to pcb boards by machines or robots then the board pcb run through yet another machine and bath soldered...ground breaking. Even today this is a commonplace but non the less amazing process to watch.
Perhaps the most iconic devices created by smd technology was the Sony Walkman family of personal cassette and radio cassette players of the 1980s. They were compact, portable and sounded great. Surface mount chip devices were used in these, sometimes bonded on to the ribbon cables and becoming part of the cable harness itself and sometimes SMD components were used in pcb sub boards around the unit.
The cassette player shrunk significantly,seemingly overnight without anyone really noticing. The batteries were smaller and they lasted longer.Some walkman models had fancy light touch then called "fuzzy logic" controls. Meanwhile back at the ranch.. the mains powered cassette radio was dead or as good as.
35mm Cameras made by Nikon and Canon were in a surface mount stratosphere right up there all on their own. Built in motordrives, super relaible autofocus and smaller batteries became reality.The Surface Mount Device was here to stay and there was no turning back.
The Walkman changed the way people listened to music and with the radio option,sports and current affairs. You could listen on the bus, train or walking ,An early form of podcast device if you like.. the forerunner of the ipod & mp3 player.
Sony brought SMD to the Philips Comapact Disk/digital audio party, the playstation came along using philips' compact disk as a media to store the games and the rest is history, this team of 2 consumer electronics giants were an unstoppable force in digital entertainment, and they continue to be at the very top of their "game".
Tooling for SMD wasnt cheap so only the "big boys" could afford the many millions of Yens & Dollars it costs but somehow GRE Inc were in there very early as well so I can only assume that this was a huge investment for GRE no doubt backed by US money from Radio Shack Inc.
In terms of market, the USA and Canada had and still have a huge customer base for scanners.
European sales were/are very small in comparison.
To give some idea of the cost, I remember my first works laptop which was made by Compaq, It had a mono screen of 8 inches or so, a 286 processor with 1mb of ram and a 40mb hard disk and a built in mini trackball mouse. It was rammed with SMD technology, the cost...not much change out of £3000. Yes a 40 megabyte hard drive folks !
GRE really were using cutting edge technology as very few hobby type devices used SMD due to the high cost. Looking back , it seemed that GRE wanted to incorporate new technology straight off. The GRE hand held units had a good reputation using very early SMDs . With the pro-2006 it wasnt as if they were short of space to mount the components as the casing has plenty of room unlike a hand held scanner.
GRE Inc Japan finally sold out their scanner side of the business to Whistler Group of USA not that long ago back in 2014 but the GRE "DNA" is still evident in todays Whistler scanner models.
I must get around to doing a post on airband radios of the 1970s,80s and 90s, the 1960s one seemed to go down quite well.
Anyway enough of devices and history, now about this particular pro-2006...
Back to the radio..
I spotted this unit for sale on Gumtree in the South of England, it was quite cheap for a 2006 but advertised as working okay.
I already have one of these fine machines featured in a earlier post but there are a series of modifications I wanted to try so this cheap unit seemed destined to become "radiostationx's Pro-2006 unit b "experimental" testbed.
I asked fellow telescope spotting friend Paul who lived not too far away if he pick it up for me, Paul managed to negotiate £5 off the asking price..Well done Paul !
He picked up the radio and dispatched it to me via courier and I eagerly waited for the parcel to arrive.
He mentioned that the owner hadnt used it for some time but he liked listening to emergency services on his pro-2006 some years ago.
On arrival I unboxed it and quickly tried it , dead, distant hiss from speaker , no display no buttons working...oh dear.
Power off and have a look.
The unit was in a very sorry state, but the smell was truly awful..I was told by my better half to "get that thing out of here" ! It was a very bad , damp musty smell. Horrible.
I retreated to the garden and opened up the covers,
Heres some photos of the unit
even though I was outdoors the smell was worse when the casing was off..
I have never seen one as bad as this, such a lovely radio in its day, now full of grime and very unloved. The muck that came out of it was unreal !
The speaker dust cover
I looked at the mains input cabling and transformer all was well on this one thankfully, unlike my previous Pro-2005 (pro-2006 in disguise) model adventure (Unit-A) which was waiting send someone to the hospital or undertaker ! Click to that radio adventure below.
derbosoft.proboards.com/thread/24861/realistic-2006-repair-teardown-heavy
The 9v duracell battery was vintage March 2001 on the sell by date and had burst its casing inside the scanner some years ago by the looks of it.
The top end of the battery was leaking also.
I cleaned the main linear pcb board of loose hair/muck and grime with a brush first then the boards were cleaned with isopropanol on Q tips to get a better look inside and gave the outside casing and buttons yet another clean with another load of baby wipes. I used a whole pack in the cleanup.
The smell has gone. I think I can safely take it inside without fear of being shouted at now !
Its starting to look a bit better.
I powered up again and looked around the main linear board for faults with some test gear and a wooden kebab skewer as a make shift probe/dibbler.
I soon found an issue . The 5 volt regulator IC-8 (MC7805C) . The screw securing the regulator heatsink to the chassis of the radio was loose. One of the leg solder joints onto the pcb was in very bad shape indeed and the leg wasnt touching the contact pad on the board. The regulator is shown here by the orange arrow.
Note the PCB is much cleaner due to the earlier isopropanol and cotton bud treatment.
That very hard to spot bad joint lives under that little bunch of cables to right of the MC7805C the 5 volt regulator (IC-8).
Re-soldering the leg on to the pads on the linear PCB and tightening the chassis heatsink screw I switched on to try things out and the 5 volt rail came back up and as if by magic ..the radio sprung into life .
There is a deafening crackle at switch on due to dirty wipers in the on-off-vol control pot, the backlight is very dim, I noticed a small crack in the top left edge of the front panel near the corner.. but the radio is working and picking up signals well, so thats the progress report so far.
I will have to get the front panel off to make repairs to the hairline crack and to clean out that dirty potentiometer properly and make some enhancement modifications.
A selection of components are on order for the mods .
There were many thousands of this model made in the 1990s, a big seller at Tandy/Radio Shack at the sum of £399/$399 respectively.
So well made and thought out, It didnt surprise me that after 20 odd years from rolling off the production line in Chiba Prefecture,a simple solder joint did the job. The radio works and works very well.It will be even better with a little TLC.
So much so, I would put a Pro-2006 up against any of todays radios for AM airband receiving. It would certainly give most a run for their money in terms of signal performance and sound quality. You will find plenty of these popping up for sale, as there were lots about in the 90s but they dont usually go for bargain basement money as they are a much sought after scanner.
The pro-2042 followed this model, another fine scanner manufactured for Radio Shack by GRE but the 2042 had ribbon cables which were prone to failure and not easy to obtain replacements when they gave up.
Watch this space for updates.
One of the golden greats of 1990s scanner radios the Realistic Pro-2006 was made for Radio Shack/Tandy by General Research Electronics Inc (GRE) Japan and designed and assembled in their factory in Chiba Prefecture.
To quote radio reference.com
"The Pro-2006 is considered by many to be the best scanner ever produced in terms of sensitivity and selectivity."
This model has great design and is much loved by airband fans due to its brilliant AM performance , no gaps coverage of both Civil and Military airband and beyond from 25mhz up to 1.3ghz.
It has top quality components which very interestingly are a mix of traditional/older THT (Through Hole Technology) mounted components and SMD (Surface Mount Devices) like the ones found in iphones and the like today.
An oldie, but a goodie !
History
In the early days of SMD production, Japan was the major player.
Nobody, but Nobody even came close.
Unlike today, SMDs were very expensive. They offered manufacturers the advantage of making their final products much smaller . For example , A capacitor or resistor could be made 1/20th of the size of a regular (THT) one. The SMDs could be glue mounted on to pcb boards by machines or robots then the board pcb run through yet another machine and bath soldered...ground breaking. Even today this is a commonplace but non the less amazing process to watch.
Perhaps the most iconic devices created by smd technology was the Sony Walkman family of personal cassette and radio cassette players of the 1980s. They were compact, portable and sounded great. Surface mount chip devices were used in these, sometimes bonded on to the ribbon cables and becoming part of the cable harness itself and sometimes SMD components were used in pcb sub boards around the unit.
The cassette player shrunk significantly,seemingly overnight without anyone really noticing. The batteries were smaller and they lasted longer.Some walkman models had fancy light touch then called "fuzzy logic" controls. Meanwhile back at the ranch.. the mains powered cassette radio was dead or as good as.
35mm Cameras made by Nikon and Canon were in a surface mount stratosphere right up there all on their own. Built in motordrives, super relaible autofocus and smaller batteries became reality.The Surface Mount Device was here to stay and there was no turning back.
The Walkman changed the way people listened to music and with the radio option,sports and current affairs. You could listen on the bus, train or walking ,An early form of podcast device if you like.. the forerunner of the ipod & mp3 player.
Sony brought SMD to the Philips Comapact Disk/digital audio party, the playstation came along using philips' compact disk as a media to store the games and the rest is history, this team of 2 consumer electronics giants were an unstoppable force in digital entertainment, and they continue to be at the very top of their "game".
Tooling for SMD wasnt cheap so only the "big boys" could afford the many millions of Yens & Dollars it costs but somehow GRE Inc were in there very early as well so I can only assume that this was a huge investment for GRE no doubt backed by US money from Radio Shack Inc.
In terms of market, the USA and Canada had and still have a huge customer base for scanners.
European sales were/are very small in comparison.
To give some idea of the cost, I remember my first works laptop which was made by Compaq, It had a mono screen of 8 inches or so, a 286 processor with 1mb of ram and a 40mb hard disk and a built in mini trackball mouse. It was rammed with SMD technology, the cost...not much change out of £3000. Yes a 40 megabyte hard drive folks !
GRE really were using cutting edge technology as very few hobby type devices used SMD due to the high cost. Looking back , it seemed that GRE wanted to incorporate new technology straight off. The GRE hand held units had a good reputation using very early SMDs . With the pro-2006 it wasnt as if they were short of space to mount the components as the casing has plenty of room unlike a hand held scanner.
GRE Inc Japan finally sold out their scanner side of the business to Whistler Group of USA not that long ago back in 2014 but the GRE "DNA" is still evident in todays Whistler scanner models.
I must get around to doing a post on airband radios of the 1970s,80s and 90s, the 1960s one seemed to go down quite well.
Anyway enough of devices and history, now about this particular pro-2006...
Back to the radio..
I spotted this unit for sale on Gumtree in the South of England, it was quite cheap for a 2006 but advertised as working okay.
I already have one of these fine machines featured in a earlier post but there are a series of modifications I wanted to try so this cheap unit seemed destined to become "radiostationx's Pro-2006 unit b "experimental" testbed.
I asked fellow telescope spotting friend Paul who lived not too far away if he pick it up for me, Paul managed to negotiate £5 off the asking price..Well done Paul !
He picked up the radio and dispatched it to me via courier and I eagerly waited for the parcel to arrive.
He mentioned that the owner hadnt used it for some time but he liked listening to emergency services on his pro-2006 some years ago.
On arrival I unboxed it and quickly tried it , dead, distant hiss from speaker , no display no buttons working...oh dear.
Power off and have a look.
The unit was in a very sorry state, but the smell was truly awful..I was told by my better half to "get that thing out of here" ! It was a very bad , damp musty smell. Horrible.
I retreated to the garden and opened up the covers,
Heres some photos of the unit
even though I was outdoors the smell was worse when the casing was off..
I have never seen one as bad as this, such a lovely radio in its day, now full of grime and very unloved. The muck that came out of it was unreal !
The speaker dust cover
I looked at the mains input cabling and transformer all was well on this one thankfully, unlike my previous Pro-2005 (pro-2006 in disguise) model adventure (Unit-A) which was waiting send someone to the hospital or undertaker ! Click to that radio adventure below.
derbosoft.proboards.com/thread/24861/realistic-2006-repair-teardown-heavy
The 9v duracell battery was vintage March 2001 on the sell by date and had burst its casing inside the scanner some years ago by the looks of it.
The top end of the battery was leaking also.
I cleaned the main linear pcb board of loose hair/muck and grime with a brush first then the boards were cleaned with isopropanol on Q tips to get a better look inside and gave the outside casing and buttons yet another clean with another load of baby wipes. I used a whole pack in the cleanup.
The smell has gone. I think I can safely take it inside without fear of being shouted at now !
Its starting to look a bit better.
I powered up again and looked around the main linear board for faults with some test gear and a wooden kebab skewer as a make shift probe/dibbler.
I soon found an issue . The 5 volt regulator IC-8 (MC7805C) . The screw securing the regulator heatsink to the chassis of the radio was loose. One of the leg solder joints onto the pcb was in very bad shape indeed and the leg wasnt touching the contact pad on the board. The regulator is shown here by the orange arrow.
Note the PCB is much cleaner due to the earlier isopropanol and cotton bud treatment.
That very hard to spot bad joint lives under that little bunch of cables to right of the MC7805C the 5 volt regulator (IC-8).
Re-soldering the leg on to the pads on the linear PCB and tightening the chassis heatsink screw I switched on to try things out and the 5 volt rail came back up and as if by magic ..the radio sprung into life .
There is a deafening crackle at switch on due to dirty wipers in the on-off-vol control pot, the backlight is very dim, I noticed a small crack in the top left edge of the front panel near the corner.. but the radio is working and picking up signals well, so thats the progress report so far.
I will have to get the front panel off to make repairs to the hairline crack and to clean out that dirty potentiometer properly and make some enhancement modifications.
A selection of components are on order for the mods .
There were many thousands of this model made in the 1990s, a big seller at Tandy/Radio Shack at the sum of £399/$399 respectively.
So well made and thought out, It didnt surprise me that after 20 odd years from rolling off the production line in Chiba Prefecture,a simple solder joint did the job. The radio works and works very well.It will be even better with a little TLC.
So much so, I would put a Pro-2006 up against any of todays radios for AM airband receiving. It would certainly give most a run for their money in terms of signal performance and sound quality. You will find plenty of these popping up for sale, as there were lots about in the 90s but they dont usually go for bargain basement money as they are a much sought after scanner.
The pro-2042 followed this model, another fine scanner manufactured for Radio Shack by GRE but the 2042 had ribbon cables which were prone to failure and not easy to obtain replacements when they gave up.
Watch this space for updates.
