Troubleshooting... strong signals now faint

[russellv2]

Something happened with my 296 this last weekend.

All of the sudden, with no explanation, and no change of settings I am having a hard time receiving local signals on my scanner. I have checked all settings, no attenuation set. No loose connectors on the radio nor on the antenna feed line. I plug either my 796 or my 750 into the same antenna and recieve those stations strongly. As an example... on my 296 and 796, I used to get my local sheriff department dispatch frequency full scale on the little bargraph that's displayed. On my 796 I still get full scale, on the 296 I'm lucky if I get a bar or two.

Any ideas?

 

[mancow]

I think Uniden has a problem with the receiver amp transistors getting easily fried by static charges through the antenna.

This exact same thing happened to my 250d. The repair documents noted a transistor was replaced. I've heard of others with this same problem but mostly with the 250d.

mancow

 

[russellv2]

Oh crap! I was hoping it wasn't going to come to that. I hoped I had just overlooked some small setting. Oh well... thanks for the help and the possible answer.

 

[Colin9690]

It could be as simple as just blowing on or cleaning the antenna connections.

 

[russellv2]

Thanks for the help, though I already tried that. Didn't help. I tried shooting a drop of contact cleaner on the connector too. I also tried to gently bend the contacts in the connector to "squeeze" the center of the BNC connector... that helped a little, though it's still not muh improved.

 

[Colin9690]

thats weird, I've had minor reception problems with my -93 before, but all that i needed to do was blow out some dirt and dust. I'm puzzled with your situation.

 

[russellv2]

I'm puzzled too. This is the first and only problem I've had with any of my radios that wasn't "user-induced" as far as I can tell. LOL It hasn't even been dropped on the ground since sometime over the summer.