Motorola Talkabout T5720 battery drain when "off"

[needairtime]

I left some batteries in a Talkabout T5720 for emergency uses but today I checked it after a few weeks in storage. The batteries drained 30% !

This was odd. The radio was pretty much off the whole time.

So I tried measuring current when off... I got almost 1mA of current flowing when the volume knob was rotated CCW to the "off" position!

Is this normal? What gives, this is more drain than my Garmin when off. The Garmin even has has soft power - I measured it to be a few microamps which I thought was okay. I guess I have to leave the batteries out of the Talkabout, or stick in an insulator to maintain the batteries...

Radio seems to work fine otherwise.

 

[radioman2001]

Look for water damage inside causing a drain, and take the batteries out. There have been some issues with the HT1250 series where the TX power amp starts leaking and drawing current all the time.

 

[needairtime]

Hmm... I opened it, no apparent water damage. All of the glue used to hold down components is darkened brown, though it may have been like that from the start (well, these things shouldn't get warm...). I noted that the battery pack seems to be split 1.5V/3V, possibly to power memory (to hold current channel, CTCSS code, ring codes, etc.) and that may be leaking...

So this isn't "normal"?