I just bought a Radio Shack Pro 94 scanner off eBay. I got it, started
playing around with it, and everything worked. Now that I have had it
for a week, I am beginning to wonder if it really works as well as it
should. I haven't yet picked up any police conversations enough to
verify what town they were in. It seems to pick up the Weather station
reasonable well. I don't really live in the center of town, although
that shouldn't explain the lack of police radio coverage where I am, so
I took it in to the center of town near the police department and I
started picking up more talk on the Police band, but nothing was
received without a fair amount of static and breakups in the words.

I am just curious as to whether or not it is fucntioning well and how I
can test it to see if it does have a problem.

On 2 Oct 2005 15:48:13 -0700, "apollo2011" said
in rec.radio.scanner:

I am just curious as to whether or not it is fucntioning well and how I
can test it to see if it does have a problem.

A common problem with portable scanners is that the antenna jack
connection to the scanner breaks. Take the antenna off and see if the
reception dies completely. If not, that could be your problem. (It
just has to be resoldered.)

If not, the front end could have a problem - damage from a strong
signal, detuning, etc. Or the antenna could be damaged. The scanner
should pick up signals from the same place the users of the system can
pick up signals without too much static and no breakup.

Thanks for the reply Al.

I wouldn't have expected the signal to die completely when the antenna
is disconnected, I would have expected to still be able to hear
something. However, I tested my scanner by tuning and holding a weather
station, and then disconnecting the antenna. The signal went dead
completely, turning the Squelch down caused static, but I expected
that. So based on that, the antenna connector seems to not be the
problem. I'm going to play around with it somemore and see if I can
deduce the problem anymore.

Thanks again.

On 3 Oct 2005 11:53:34 -0700, "apollo2011" said
in rec.radio.scanner:

I wouldn't have expected the signal to die completely when the antenna
is disconnected, I would have expected to still be able to hear
something. However, I tested my scanner by tuning and holding a weather
station, and then disconnecting the antenna. The signal went dead
completely, turning the Squelch down caused static, but I expected
that. So based on that, the antenna connector seems to not be the
problem.

Good diagnosis. At this point I'd actually measure the sensitivity,
but that takes some instrumentation. Maybe some ham in your area
could check it for you.