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Old September 13th 04, 05:58 AM
Tempest
 
Posts: n/a
Default Resurrecting this Pro-2021

Hello all.

Recently I was helping out at my office clearing out a storage room,
and I came across an old PRO-2021 scanner. It had about an inch of
dust on it and I figure it had been stashed there for quite some time.

I took it home and cleaned it up. The thing reeks bad of cirgarette
smoke, and I cleared-off years of nicotine and dirt. Apparently. that
scanner was an integral part of the company back in the day and it was
in the same room with heavy smokers for quite a while.

Looking inside, it appears to have a discriminator tap mod, and the
cellular band was restored.

I plugged it in and it works, but the display is DIM (no suprise).

But I noticed that it just doesn't seem to pick up much of anything
well at all. Sure, it picks-up that NOAA weather radio frequency no
problem -- nice and clearly..

But I haven't gotten it to pick up a single frequency anywhere near
the 800 - 900 Mhz range. Maybe the occasional freq. in the 400Mhz
range, etc.. but it just seems 'weak', if ya know what I mean.

This old stashed scanner didn't have the stock whip antenna, so I
bought a Motorola-to-BNC adapter and tried a couple fo different
rubber-duckie antennas and whatever else I have, and it just doesn't
seem to really pick up much at all.

Is this some kind of known problem? An aged piece of electronics, way
beyond its time, etc.? Is something else wrong, maybe something
relatively easy to fix?

I'd really like to get it working again, even though it's pretty dated
as far as functionality goes..

Thanks in advance for any input.

Kevin