Scanner broken or strong interference?

[Rt169Radio]

One of my scanners (a Uniden BC350C) just started acting strange today, it was working fine until sometime this afternoon. It is like the squelch is wide open and will not close, and it happens on all freq bands, I tried changing antennas and checking the squelch but it still does it. I tried other radios (ham radios, other scanners) and they are fine. It even does it if there is no antenna plugged in. But it can still receive, so is this just a interference problem or is it time to get a new scanner?

 

[DickH]

One of my scanners (a Uniden BC350C) just started acting strange today, it was working fine until sometime this afternoon. It is like the squelch is wide open and will not close, and it happens on all freq bands, I tried changing antennas and checking the squelch but it still does it. I tried other radios (ham radios, other scanners) and they are fine. It even does it if there is no antenna plugged in. But it can still receive, so is this just a interference problem or is it time to get a new scanner?

Sounds like a component failure - IC chip, capacitor, resistor ???

 

[popnokick]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B329 Safari/8536.25)

Look for AC to DC switching power supply(s) near (within 30-50 feet). These are the ubiquitous "wall wart" power supply devices that come with every piece of electronics you buy these days. Cordless phones, cable boxes, scanners, DVD players, Roku boxes, network switch, wireless access point... You name it, it's got one. Many of them generate horrendous RF that sounds like open squelch. Turn on your scanner and start unplugging your wall warts. When you find the offender come back here with details and to get suggestions what to do.

 

[Ed_Seedhouse]

Take it a few hundred yards from the house. If the problem is still there then chances are it's a defective component in the radio. If it goes away and comes back when you go home you know you have a local noise problem.

 

[Rt169Radio]

Take it a few hundred yards from the house. If the problem is still there then chances are it's a defective component in the radio. If it goes away and comes back when you go home you know you have a local noise problem.

I tried that and it was still static on all bands, so I guess its new scanner time.

 

[Rt169Radio]

I turned on the scanner today after it was sitting for a bit and it was working for a minute or two then it went back to being static, so am not sure what that was about. Anyway when I get my new scanner (a Uniden BC355N) I will see if that gets static or not.