Pro 106 ... 50% receive?

[aggieemt]

I have a Pro-106 scanner that is a few years old.... One day the scanner stopped powering up due to a broken internal power connection... I sent it in to a repair shop, and they fixed the power issue. While he had it, he told me it was only receiving at 50% (based on dialing up NOAA weather in his area). He had no idea what to do next, and shipped it back to me. Keep in mind, I have had no problems with reception on this scanner until this shop got ahold of it.

When I got the scanner back (after it sat on his shelf for three months), I had moved to a different part of the state, and reprogrammed for my new location. Now, the scanner DOES have receive issues... Many talkgroups are spotty reception; I went into the TSYS analyze menu, and in some cases, I'm seeing 99% signal on the trunk that the talkgroup is on... return to scanning, and it's spotty. In some cases, some talkgroups on a trunk are perfectly normal, while others are spotty.

With the above occurring, I can dial up NOAA weather, and it's clear as a bell. I was thinking it was a rubber duck antenna issue, so I upgraded to a roof-mount magnetic antenna, and the problem persist...

1) How does one determine what percentage the scanner is receiving?
2) Any thoughts on either the 50% receive, or why the reception is reduced after the power issue?
3) Any known reputable repair shops who might could repair this?


ETA: I went into the extended settings menu and clicked on the "reset to default" button just to see what happened... it seems that the Endtone Threshold was set to 350, and the default is 80. I'm not sure what this setting is, but maybe it has something to do with the scanner thinking the transmission ends before it actually does, therefore cutting in and out...?

 

[N2SCV]

Maybe he was listening to KWO-35 in NYC-it's degraded a lot of
times.NOAA Weather Radio KWO35

 

[aggieemt]

Not sure what he was listening to, he just said "weather".

Something else which I found interesting is this: I already had several of these trunks programmed into the scanner. When I went back and reviewed the trunk frequencies, almost every single trunk had every frequency wiped out except for the control channels. Kinda odd... not sure if it's related or not. To clarify, before this issue started, I updated the system frequencies directly from the radio reference website.

I drove an hour or so out to my parents and dialed up my program for their area, which is mostly VHF with some UHF... nothing trunked. VHF comes in crystal clear... UHF is 99% clear.

 

[drayd48]

Just a thought. The weather he was probably referring to is the NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards since it is on a high power continuous broadcast and can be picked up just about everywhere in the USA (I use it all the time to test out new antennas and radio reception). The problem that you are most likely having is that you are getting multisite distortion which is very common with radioshack scanners. Even it is shows that you are getting 99% signal, that may be true but the scanner does not know which voice tower to pick up from and could be picking up the farthest tower away and not able to decode it good. Very common problem with radioshack scanners.

 

[buddrousa]

G and G may can fix your problems Home Page

 

[wtp]

i don't have that radio but...

did you check the squelch ?

 

[aggieemt]

@buddrousa: He's actually the one that diagnosed the radio, and didn't know how to fix it....

UPDATE: apparently I'm looking at two different unrelated issues here: since I moved and am listening to new trunks, I wasn't sure if the poor reception I'm getting now was related to the "50% receive", or not...

Apparently it's a separate issue... I did a little more digging, and realized that the trunk/TG's I'm trying to listen to are on a P25 Phase II system, which aren't compatible with the Pro 106. Sooo... guess it's time to upgrade.