Something blown in my Spectra?

[BlueLineEnt]

Hi All,

I am not exactly sure what problem I have, but I'll give you the story and maybe someone will have some idea where to start. I have a UHF spectra (D44KMA7JA7BK) dash mount A7.

Have power to the unit, power to the ignition wire, everythings all hooked up great.

The problem is this. While I was in the truck the other day, I had scan on and was listing to one of the scan list channels and I pushed the scan button to turn off scan. At the moment I did this, the radio let some sort of squeal out of the speaker and the radio went dead. I checked all the power connections and everything, and its all good. What I have noticed when I try to cycle it with the power button is that when I push it and it should be in the "on" phase, the TX and RX lights come on and stay on, I get a quiet click from the speaker and that is all. When I push it again (off) they turn off and everything is as it should be when off. No matter how many times I cycle it, it hasn't fixed itself yet.

I havent tried hooking it up on the bench and trying to pull a codeplug from it yet to see if it will work. Hopefully someone here might have had this problem before, or at least know what happened, and how to correct it. I need this radio to last me till 2013, or at least until I can get a newer model, as long as its not expensive to fix.

Thanks
Matt

[wazzzzzzzzup]

it would not surprise me if you have the death caps, i had a spectra that did all kinds of crazy audio issues.....squeals, ticks, not opening to carrier type stuff. pop the cover and look for the little can style caps, some will leak and spill acid on the traces. do a search on the board for the spectra cap issue, i think theres even some folks on here that repair them. in my opinion, if it is cap damage, ditch the radio and buy an astro spectra, never seen a cap problem in one and if you get one with the right flash code, you get P25 digital

[Jim202]

I am not sure I would tell you to ditch the radio at this point. That may be a little premature to the issue at hand.
Bear in mind that the narrow band requirement is slowly getting here. January 01, 2013 will require that all VHF and
UHF operation be on narrow band by that date. This might influence what you do at this point.

Not all of the Astro Spectra radios are able to do the narrow band requirements. Walk carefully in any used radio
you purchase from this point on. This is part of the reason your starting to see so many of the older used
radios up for sale. Some of them are being sold for top dollar prices. Don't fall into this trap. These radios
have a very limited life in the part 90 service. The January 01, 2013 date is not that far away.

I have to agree that you might be in the bad cap problem with your radio. The caps are not that hard to replace.
It just takes some skill in doing the soldering. You may or may not want to have someone else do the work. No
matter who does the work, the circuit board does need to be cleaned before the new caps are installed if you
go that route. The leaking chemical will eat away at the circuit board and can cause unreparable damage if
allowed to get too bad. If the chemical gets into the sub layers of the circuit board, then the chances of
stopping the chemical attack are all but over. If there is just surface etching of the circuit lands, then you
may be able to have it repaired.

Jim

it would not surprise me if you have the death caps, i had a spectra that did all kinds of crazy audio issues.....squeals, ticks, not opening to carrier type stuff. pop the cover and look for the little can style caps, some will leak and spill acid on the traces. do a search on the board for the spectra cap issue, i think theres even some folks on here that repair them. in my opinion, if it is cap damage, ditch the radio and buy an astro spectra, never seen a cap problem in one and if you get one with the right flash code, you get P25 digital

[wazzzzzzzzup]

if it is cap damage, ditch the radio and buy an astro spectra

not advising him to ditch it now, just IF its determined the caps have damaged the radio. my opinion.

[RadioSouth]

Probably less likely and I know you've said you checked power. But- I had the same indication when I did an install where the main power line was lacking a fuse. The ignition sense line was apparently giving the radio power for a partial power up but hung up in that same step you describe where both Tx and Rx were illuminated and nothing else. Might be worth checking the main power cable again.

[BlueLineEnt]

Nope, def not a power issue. I have the radio on an Astron RS50A now on the bench, and it is still giving me the same problem. I don't believe it is something outside of the radio housing.

[RadioSouth]

Oh well, boardmember Will does great things with Spectra's.

[dooorslammer]

hi

when you keyed up ,does the the yellow lite come on also how many amps does it show . You should be hooked to dummy load , I had problem where i was transmittimg and the radio stopped txing and recieving .The worst thing you can do is to take the radio apart before a tec can look at it , cheaper in long run . I have had my astro spectra for 2 years which when it broke all they could find was loose cable in the radio . its ok oday cheap repair .


peter