Batboard

radioservice wrote:Thanks....I haven't HACKED it at all.

radioservice wrote:It's well within the band...just one day it started going in and out of the Fail mode. Even today it works half the time, until you turn it off and turn it back on then it enters into the Fail 001 mode....like it's possessed by a teenager or something. Then it eventually straightens itself out.

ALL Spectra mobile radios contain about a dozen small aluminum surface-mount electrolytic capacitors that have a major problem: they start leaking a nasty corrosive electrolyte out of the bottom after 10-15 years of age. Those used in mobile service that may have seen more extreme temperatures can age even faster. Since most Spectras are over 10 years old this means that they are failures waiting to happen. You need to recap the radio as soon as you get it (unless the previous owner has already done that) since the caps can be leaking with no visible operational symptoms.

tvsjr wrote:VCO out of lock. You've either hacked the radio and pushed it too far outside its rated bandsplit causing the VCO to unlock (may be fixable with a conductive pen, but you still have the front-end filters to deal with), or you have the dreaded leaky cap issue, where boards have been damaged by corrosive materials leaking from failed electrolytic caps.