Inspired by this post by @Omega-TI (New Scanner Nightmare Tales), I have a few various nightmares in my radio life. Some are more serious than others of course, but all caused me grief or cost me money. Some I have already described, so they will be mentioned more briefly.
I wrote an entire tale of the demise of my Regency TMR-8H, in fact it was the first “Scanner Tale” I wrote here, back almost 3 years ago. (See Scanner Tales: The life and death of my Regency TMR-8H).
I also wrote about various screwups that proved that I am actually a real-life human being and not the perfect male specimen that most people think I am. See Scanner Tales: Screw-ups that prove I am actually human for those stories.
I have destroyed other radios, some of which I recall vividly, others seem to have been erased from memory. Here are some of the ones I recall.
Potty Time:
I have dropped radios not once, not twice, but three times into the toilet. Once in clear water (annoying but not destructive) and once just before the flush (potentially destructive). The third was the end of a scanner for obvious reasons.
I have an Icom R5, actually I have 2 of them. One of them took a bath. It had been in my shirt pocket during a railfan excursion and as I leaned down to put up the seat of the porcelain facility it slipped out of that pocket and landed with a splash. Thankfully it was pre-pee, so I just took it out and wiped off the (clean) water and let it dry. I removed the batteries just in case as it dried. It continues to work fine to this day. I did the same thing with an iPhone once, one would think I would have learned but not this old geezer.
The second event was with a BCD396T. This was after an extended seated session; I was able to program several banks manually during this particular event. As I stood when I was finished, I turned to activate the handle and dropped my 396T, it bounced off the tank and plopped right into the bowl. Considering what was in that bowl there was no way I thought I was going to save that radio. It was soon after the 396XT was announced and I was already planning on upgrading. I plucked out the radio and rinsed it off the best I could. I ran off to the store and bought a couple gallons of distilled water and used that to rinse off the interior and exterior of the scanner. After letting it dry out for a day or two, I reassembled it and it seemed to work fine. I could not in good conscious sell it down the road so ended up giving it to a friend a couple years later who was also advised of its provenance. He was happy to get it as money was tight.
The third event, actually the first chronologically, was a PRO92. I never liked that radio, although I ended up having two of them, this was my first one. I was at a picnic at a local forest preserve. There were a couple outhouses, of which I availed myself of one. That PRO92 got dropped after I set it on the edge of the bench as I used the facility. I was in midstream when it tumbled into the abyss and never seen again. I can only imagine the confusion of a future archeologist trying to figure out what this thing was doing in an excavated pile of poop a thousand years from now.
Other droppages:
I have also dropped a radio into the inland ocean called Lake Michigan. For a year I had a boat shared with a friend. It wasn’t much, an 18-foot outboard. It was big enough however to take a few friends out on the lake, as long as the seas weren’t too rough. It did not have a radio, so I bought a marine portable. I think it was an Icom, it was at least compatible with my desk charger for my U16. The second or third time I took out the boat I hit a wave wrong and “stuffed” the bow into the next wave. We all got soaked and I lost not only the radio but also the cooler. Fun fact: One would think that marine radios would be deigned to float; they are not.
I had a set of 49 MHz. walkies that I bought many years ago. They were handy for projects, and I was on the roof of a friend’s house helping with an antenna project. I dropped this cheap RadioShack walkie, and it bounced down the roof and hit the ground. Aside from a broken battery door it was fine, I used electrical tape to hold what was left of the door on to keep the AA batteries in place and it lived on for a few more years.
I have dropped a bunch of my other scanners over the years. I dropped my 436 a while back and broke off the antenna connector. I was able to order a replacement SMA connector and replaced it myself, that was successful. When I dropped my SDS100 and did the same I did not wat to press my luck, and by then Uniden stopped selling repair parts. I sent it in for the repair and got it back a week or two later and it has worked perfectly since.
Not long ago I was swapping out an ST-2 antenna mounted on the side of my house with an Omni-X. I dropped the ST-2 after removing it from the mount, missing my helper/wife by inches. The antenna broke; they weren’t that sturdy to begin with. I have a couple others available, so it was more annoyance than nightmare.
Work Nightmares:
Being the “Radio Guy” at a small police department I had to deal with various issues with radios over the years. We had a guy get his Motorola MX340 run over by a fire engine, that was the end of that radio. I wasn’t too mad though; I hated those radios. We had a half dozen of them, along with a few MX340-S’s (synthesized vs. crystal elements). The MX line was beset by problems, usually related to bad ground busses and module connections. They developed the “MX Whine” over time and once that happed it was time to trash it.
One of our firefighters brought me an HT1000 which also got run over by an engine. This one survived, the battery was smushed and the case cracked but the radio was fine. I ordered a new case and swapped it out and put it back in service.
The worst nightmare however was a lightning strike during a thunderstorm. The radios were protected by Polyphasers so no issues there. We had an old Teletype machine left over from the pre-computer days that was repurposed to receive weather alerts that used to be transmitted on a ham radio freq. This was connected to a Regency scanner in the basement connected to an (apparently) unprotected antenna on the roof of the building. I was just a rookie at the time and was giving the dispatcher a quick break when there was an Earth-Shattering Kaboom, rattling the building, causing the lights to flicker off, the generator to kick in and other various craziness. That teletype took the brunt of it; it started spewing out oddball nonsense printed on the paper and the entire roll ran thru the printer. Its bell was dinging incessantly.
Downstairs that old scanner was toast. I presume that the current travelled up whatever data line connected the scanner to the teletype, causing its demise. There was not much left of that scanner other than the smell of melted components. Thankfully that was the only damage from that storm.
I wrote an entire tale of the demise of my Regency TMR-8H, in fact it was the first “Scanner Tale” I wrote here, back almost 3 years ago. (See Scanner Tales: The life and death of my Regency TMR-8H).
I also wrote about various screwups that proved that I am actually a real-life human being and not the perfect male specimen that most people think I am. See Scanner Tales: Screw-ups that prove I am actually human for those stories.
I have destroyed other radios, some of which I recall vividly, others seem to have been erased from memory. Here are some of the ones I recall.
Potty Time:
I have dropped radios not once, not twice, but three times into the toilet. Once in clear water (annoying but not destructive) and once just before the flush (potentially destructive). The third was the end of a scanner for obvious reasons.
I have an Icom R5, actually I have 2 of them. One of them took a bath. It had been in my shirt pocket during a railfan excursion and as I leaned down to put up the seat of the porcelain facility it slipped out of that pocket and landed with a splash. Thankfully it was pre-pee, so I just took it out and wiped off the (clean) water and let it dry. I removed the batteries just in case as it dried. It continues to work fine to this day. I did the same thing with an iPhone once, one would think I would have learned but not this old geezer.
The second event was with a BCD396T. This was after an extended seated session; I was able to program several banks manually during this particular event. As I stood when I was finished, I turned to activate the handle and dropped my 396T, it bounced off the tank and plopped right into the bowl. Considering what was in that bowl there was no way I thought I was going to save that radio. It was soon after the 396XT was announced and I was already planning on upgrading. I plucked out the radio and rinsed it off the best I could. I ran off to the store and bought a couple gallons of distilled water and used that to rinse off the interior and exterior of the scanner. After letting it dry out for a day or two, I reassembled it and it seemed to work fine. I could not in good conscious sell it down the road so ended up giving it to a friend a couple years later who was also advised of its provenance. He was happy to get it as money was tight.
The third event, actually the first chronologically, was a PRO92. I never liked that radio, although I ended up having two of them, this was my first one. I was at a picnic at a local forest preserve. There were a couple outhouses, of which I availed myself of one. That PRO92 got dropped after I set it on the edge of the bench as I used the facility. I was in midstream when it tumbled into the abyss and never seen again. I can only imagine the confusion of a future archeologist trying to figure out what this thing was doing in an excavated pile of poop a thousand years from now.
Other droppages:
I have also dropped a radio into the inland ocean called Lake Michigan. For a year I had a boat shared with a friend. It wasn’t much, an 18-foot outboard. It was big enough however to take a few friends out on the lake, as long as the seas weren’t too rough. It did not have a radio, so I bought a marine portable. I think it was an Icom, it was at least compatible with my desk charger for my U16. The second or third time I took out the boat I hit a wave wrong and “stuffed” the bow into the next wave. We all got soaked and I lost not only the radio but also the cooler. Fun fact: One would think that marine radios would be deigned to float; they are not.
I had a set of 49 MHz. walkies that I bought many years ago. They were handy for projects, and I was on the roof of a friend’s house helping with an antenna project. I dropped this cheap RadioShack walkie, and it bounced down the roof and hit the ground. Aside from a broken battery door it was fine, I used electrical tape to hold what was left of the door on to keep the AA batteries in place and it lived on for a few more years.
I have dropped a bunch of my other scanners over the years. I dropped my 436 a while back and broke off the antenna connector. I was able to order a replacement SMA connector and replaced it myself, that was successful. When I dropped my SDS100 and did the same I did not wat to press my luck, and by then Uniden stopped selling repair parts. I sent it in for the repair and got it back a week or two later and it has worked perfectly since.
Not long ago I was swapping out an ST-2 antenna mounted on the side of my house with an Omni-X. I dropped the ST-2 after removing it from the mount, missing my helper/wife by inches. The antenna broke; they weren’t that sturdy to begin with. I have a couple others available, so it was more annoyance than nightmare.
Work Nightmares:
Being the “Radio Guy” at a small police department I had to deal with various issues with radios over the years. We had a guy get his Motorola MX340 run over by a fire engine, that was the end of that radio. I wasn’t too mad though; I hated those radios. We had a half dozen of them, along with a few MX340-S’s (synthesized vs. crystal elements). The MX line was beset by problems, usually related to bad ground busses and module connections. They developed the “MX Whine” over time and once that happed it was time to trash it.
One of our firefighters brought me an HT1000 which also got run over by an engine. This one survived, the battery was smushed and the case cracked but the radio was fine. I ordered a new case and swapped it out and put it back in service.
The worst nightmare however was a lightning strike during a thunderstorm. The radios were protected by Polyphasers so no issues there. We had an old Teletype machine left over from the pre-computer days that was repurposed to receive weather alerts that used to be transmitted on a ham radio freq. This was connected to a Regency scanner in the basement connected to an (apparently) unprotected antenna on the roof of the building. I was just a rookie at the time and was giving the dispatcher a quick break when there was an Earth-Shattering Kaboom, rattling the building, causing the lights to flicker off, the generator to kick in and other various craziness. That teletype took the brunt of it; it started spewing out oddball nonsense printed on the paper and the entire roll ran thru the printer. Its bell was dinging incessantly.
Downstairs that old scanner was toast. I presume that the current travelled up whatever data line connected the scanner to the teletype, causing its demise. There was not much left of that scanner other than the smell of melted components. Thankfully that was the only damage from that storm.
