Uniden tuner utility needed.

[buddrousa]

Well most here that are not in the 2way industry and have the proper test equipment and the sense to read and follow the writen directions fits most hobbyist here. Most Hams now can not even build their own radios like the hams from the 60's and 70's.

 

[mmckenna]

You said:

Whether or not the average user would be able to do it is precisely the question you introduced... Admittedly you skipped the question part and jumped to assuming most people will screw it up.

I'm not the original poster. I'm just someone who enjoys throwing in different "what if" scenarios to get people riled up.

It's working. My evil plan is working!

I do think many would screw it up. My opinion. You may not agree, but I think we are reading some very different posts on this site.

 

[NoahWL]

I'm not the original poster. I'm just someone who enjoys throwing in different "what if" scenarios to get people riled up.

It's working. My evil plan is working!

I do think many would screw it up. My opinion. You may not agree, but I think we are reading some very different posts on this site.

I'm not saying people won't screw it up. I'm saying the morons that screw it up and blame Uniden don't matter. There's no reason the people trying to fix their scanners shouldn't be able to just because someone will break theirs.

I think we are reading the same posts on this site. I just think there are a lot more technically inclined scanner owners out there than you think, that choose not to participate here.

 

[buddrousa]

Can you tell me what a SIMPSON 360 is and why after 47 years it is still a go to tool.
So you really think that the people that cry about paying $650 for a scanner will pay $10,000 plus for the service tools to do the tuning?
Get real it will never happen then they will cry about the cheap built scanner not working. You see how the tuner tools work for diesel trunks EPA got involved trucks burning just to name a few.

 

[phask]

Can you tell me what a SIMPSON 360 is and why after 47 years it is still a go to tool.
So you really think that the people that cry about paying $650 for a scanner will pay $10,000 plus for the service tools to do the tuning?
Get real it will never happen then they will cry about the cheap built scanner not working. You see how the tuner tools work for diesel trunks EPA got involved trucks burning just to name a few.

I can, I can. Hand up in the back row. Years ago I worked for a while in a factory's tool crib. Large operation, 60+ maintenance men and most had electrical qualifications. Had around 7 or 8 360's. There was always one or 2 out for repair.

Dropped and broke the case (brittle unforgiving Bakelite). Checking a live circuit and not only blow out that tiny fuse but also blow out the meter.

Any of today's 20 buck meters will blow them out of the water, plus survive a 10' fall.

 

[buddrousa]

The only 1 I have ever seen broken was done by hooking it up improperly but them being a FET Meter they do not load circuits and a well maintained 360 works very well in todays shops.

 

[phask]

The only 1 I have ever seen broken was done by hooking it up improperly but them being a FET Meter they do not load circuits and a well maintained 360 works very well in todays shops.

You've never seen a bunch of fat-handed maintenance men Heck, one of our lead electricians (and an alcoholic) owned his own Simpson and would blow the fuse a few times a week, and blow the meter a few times a year.

 

[redbeard]

This mindset is absurd. It's my scanner and if I "break" it that's on me. Guess how much special equipment I used to realign my BCT8 after replacing the ceramic filters? None. Find a few known stations like WWVB or NOAA, tune out the offset, good enough. We're not sending our scanners to space nor are they life-saving equipment. Not to mention, it's 2023. Average Joe Scanner likely can generate a perfectly suitable test signal (and beyond) with something like a TinySA Ultra, which is exactly what I used to align my TS430s.

Worst case scenario Uniden adds another troubleshooting step: "Did you try resetting the drift offset back to 0ppm?"

Given the range of the scanner there are even better choices in many areas for a frequency to net to, something like a GPS-disciplined simulcast trunking control channel. I wouldn't always count on NOAA to be on-freq.

 

[oceans777]

WINRADIO for at least the G305 had a simple step process to do this using just the time frequencies or weather etc. I don’t know how technically relevant that is to this excellent idea.
Interestingly Tom Petty never released a song suggesting Uniden would offer this utility when dogs have wings...

 

[Bill696]

Just saw this thread and honestly it is a very good idea. As a recent owner of an SDS-100 I was shocked to see there is no PPM frequency offset feature and RF gain setting in the menu. These settings are pretty much needed on this hardware! The cheap tuner chip they used in these scanners is comparable to the early sdr sticks, we all know how much they drifted and how much correction they needed. Especially with the waterfall update it would be easy to make smal adjustments on known, stable signals. I really hope Uniden will give us and our overseas friends access to these settings.

 

[Blackswan73]

most high end communications receivers in the last fifty years or so, plus some higher end portable shortwave radios have a user accessible way to adjust/calibrate the reference oscillator frequency. But to let consumers inside their radios with diddle sticks, or worse, screwdrivers, without having proper alignment equipment is a recipe for disaster

B.S.

 

[trimmerj]

I decided to tweak my father's fm multiplex adaptor as a kid to get increased channel separation. He wasn't impressed....

 

[buddrousa]

Did he give you what Johnny gave the drum?
A good beating.

 

[trimmerj]

Yes indeed

 

[majoco]

As a retired calibration engineer, any test equipment used to carry out an adjustment to bring an item into the published accuracy must have a specification of better than four times the item under test. The test equipment used to perform the adjustment must have been tested to be within specification itself and be shown to be stable enough to not go out of tolerance within its calibration period.

An 'off air' signal is rarely good enough, even WWV because of doppler shift on the reflected signal, and any crystal controlled signal from Fred's transmitter certainly won't do.

If you get the chance to buy/beg/borrow/steal a calibration source, grab it with both hands. I have a double-ovened HP 3586A which can measure and generate a signal but even then I caste a leery eye at it occasionally.