RC India

Since we are seeing tall claims about warranty repair for radios from sellers elsewhere, we need some information on your personal experiences if any about repair of radios and receivers by either local shops or by manufacturers (under warranty or otherwise).

Or do we just take it to the local TV and stereo repair folks ?

Please post your personal experiences in radio equipment repair here.  Note that having to brand X or Y repaired is not negative on the brand itself, as need for repair can be caused by a variety of reasons, a primary one is handle without care !

Looking for information like "whether you had to ship to the authorized service center outside India", "how long was the process" or even "whether it can all be done locally most of the time" ?

What about the plans by existing radio sellers ?  Do you have an agreement with the suppliers/manufacturers that you collect and send them outside India on the customers behalf ? How supportive are the sellers in such cases ?

All this would be great information for any prospective buyer.

No response !  Looks like radios are built to last, and people take good care of them.  I am surprised that no one EVER had any issues with them ever though.

The only case I know of were with JR XP9303 2.4Ghz radios, which had to be sent to the US twice (from Qatar).

My guess is (and I would possibly do the same) that (a) radios are use and throw or (b) when used and failing sell or (c) if failed then harvest any parts for some project. At least in this part of the world where no local repairs are possible or at least reliably possible, the above options are possibly the only ones.

Buying a new one doesn't take time either.  :o

Hmmm....  Would people not try to repair their radios that typically cost over 10K ?  The scenarios you described are very much probable, but those cannot be the only ones. 

I guess this is yet another reason why these brands are what they are.  As for the cheap ones, you are right, throwing them away or using them for parts make sense.  The good ones do seem to last, so that takes care of the other half !

Do not go to local TV repair fellows. Most of them will do R&D on your radio and you will likely end up worse. Find somebody who can analyze the issue without modifying anything and then let you know what to do.

Most problems I have seen are due user mistakes in charging and plugging in the battery wrong way. Seen regulators, filters or fuse (dumb but lucky owners) blown this way. These can be repaired by any competent electronics savvy person. There are usually one or two such RC fliers in your field. Have also changed region specific frequency limitations in synthesized radios. Similar to what Anwar did recently but it was a hardware fix in that module. If there is a problem with RF section, I do not attempt to repair it, nor encourage it. It should be returned to the manufacturer for a proper fix. Other than the unavailability of suitable RF transistors locally, it will also change the tuning. You need a spectrum analyzer which is very rare to find to do the job properly. Even if you tune it blindly to get a good link with your receiver, you could be exceeding the bandwidth or generating harmonics that could affect other fliers. Putting other's models and fliers at risk would be an irresponsible thing to do.

Any damage to the baseband section would involve changing proprietary ICs and cannot be done locally anyway.

On receivers I have seen problems with antennas, ceramic filters and PCB breaks. These repairs could be attempted if properly tested before use.

Thank you Rajesh. 

Still wondering about people who have had to send the radio to the manufacturer for repairs (may be via the LHS they purchased from).  Guess we have all been pretty much lucky not having to do that so far.