Scanner Interference?

[MNBug]

Hey Everyone,

I have a PRO-96. It worked very well for years, however, now I don't think I am even hearing 1/2 the traffic. I also get more static and garbled talk then I used to. Is it possible my wireless phone or wifi is interfering? Or if I bring it to Radio Shack can they do a "recondition" on it?

I live in Minneapolis and am only listening to Minneapolis police/fire and St. Paul police/fire (St. Paul is just about 5 blocks from my house). And my cities use 800 MHz digital trunced system (APCO-25). I have triple checked that my frequencies are correct and even downloaded them from the RR.com DB.

Anyone with experience with a degrading signal out there?

Thanks

NC

 

[DickH]

Your trouble could be from a new cell phone site. Look around your neighborhood for a new tower or antennas.
If your scanner has an attenuator, try turning it on.

 

[wtp]

or?

or did you just turn it on?

 

[Ronaldski]

Course try going outside with it away from the house, try a different antenna.
Heres a FAQ on reception from my website: http://webpages.charter.net/radiosite/FAQ.html

While scanning just the digital bank (scanlist), push the MAN key to see if you can hear the control channel signal. If doing that and its on a different frequency than the known control channel, use the up-down arrow key to navigate to it.The % being only 5 blocks away should be above 90 on the assumption the transmitter tower is close to that. Since you have downloaded the setup for rebanded from the db, should be good there.

Then I would try tuning in your noaa weather, see if you get that, still as you did before, then tune in a known oh 154-156 station and finally try if you can get a local airports atis continuous airport update signal.
MSP's:
120.800 135.350

If you get a low % on the digital, but get the rest as I mentioned as good as before, I would strongly feel your VR4 needs to be adjusted.
In the last month Ive fixed two pro 96's and another when the fellow stops by with his that couldnt get 800 mhz digital, but all the rest came in good. Both exhibited no 800 reception but were good in the other bands.The other two with power off, both can back in reception when I turned the vr4 about 1/8 turn counter clockwise. The screwdriver used is very small, like one for eyeglass screws, etc.
First tries I could get 800 in great, but went too far and other bands weren't coming in. So I went in and lessened the tweak I made on vr4.
I just did it by hand, I didnt use a signal generator.

The 96's are getting long in the tooth and are falling out of tolerance.
See PRO-96 Internal Adjustments - The RadioReference Wiki

Other threads RadioReference.com - Scanner Frequencies and Radio Frequency Reference