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TR396 help

longhaireddwb

longhaireddwb

W9WDX Amateur Radio Club Member
Oct 8, 2008
555
30
38
Colorado Springs, CO
I have this Texas Ranger 396fc and I have no receive. I tested all the transistors and no caps look bad. It transmits fine just no receive. Can anyone point me in the right direction to keep testing from here to find the problem. Like which IC to test and some specs. I just can't seem to find any info on this radio and what I find for other radios with the same board don't have voltage specs on the chips.

Help out a guy to get a nice little radio going again. Thanks...
 

man, i've had a couple of those 396's. both worked great. i have no clue what to check for a receive issue. hope you get it figured out.
 
wow, a big top of the line forum like this and nobody has anything on the 396? :crying:

Any help out there for this great little radio? No receive! Trans is OK. It acts as if the antenna is not hooked up as far as the receive goes. If I turn the volume up all the way I can barely hear some noise but when the squelch is turned all the way to one side or the other there is no differance. Antenna is connected and when I key up it transmits to another radio in my driveway.
I checked all the transistors and caps the best I could with out any info and all look good. Nothing is burned as far as I can see. I have to be missing something.


Anybody have any ideas?
 
Last edited:
Update:
When I turn the volume all the way up I can hear talking and its on the right frequency so I am getting receive! The problem is that its very quite with the speaker and external speaker. Also when I try to adjust the squelch it never squelches anything out. Like its not working at all. The RF and Mic Gains are working correctly.

Very Low volume and no control on the squelch.

Help
 
well i cant seem to find what board is in this radio except that its some sort of version of the EPT69610Z board.

sounds like the problem is that someone adjusted the wrong pot inside the radio and turned the squelch range pot by accident or because the info they were using was incorrect.

to me it really sounds like your squelch is all the way tight and wont let any receive through it.

i dont know which VR to tell you to adjust to fix this because i cant find the info.
if someone can come up with a schematic or better yet, service manual for it; just find the internal squelch range VR and see if its adjusted all the way one direction.
adjusting this VR to around half way should get you started, and you can put it where you want it after that.

sorry i cant be of more help than that.
LC
 
Thanks for the input LC!

I will check into that. I hadn't thought of that one!

Your right that it has the same board as many of the other rangers. The EPT69610Z. And I've spend hours trying to find a service manual on this exact radio with no luck. There are a few others that are real close to the same so I will print off a couple pages and see if I can locate the proper pot.

I'll let you know if this fixes it. I got my fingers crossed. Although its hard to type this way.:wink:
 
Well it was a nice try!
It didn't change anything. I set the AM TX Power, AM Modulation, AM Squelch and the RF Power meter.

I guess the next thing to try would be a complete alignment although I'm afraid that isn't going to help this problem.

Anyone else have any ideas on what to look for with this problem?
 
Hope that this helps.

Adjustments

AM Modulation limiter R-276


VR-1 AM S-METER
VR-2 SSB S-METER
VR-3 SSB SQUELCH RANGE
VR-4 AM SQUELCH RANGE
VR-6 SSB CARRIER BALANCE
VR-7 TX OFFSET
VR-9 RF METER
VR-10 FINAL BIAS
VR-12 DRIVER BIAS
VR-13 SSB ALC
VR-14 A HIGH POWER
VR-15 AM MODULATION METER
VR-16 AM MODULATION
VR-17 SSB POWER
VR-18 AM LOW POWER
VC1-10.240 MHz Frequency adjustment
 
mongoose,

the TR396 is an AM only radio. are you sure the VR numbers from the SSB versions of this board are the same?
LC
 
Thanks for trying to help Mongoose.
I did find those same VR numbers and they went to a 966 or a 936. when I did check the am power, meter, modulation and squelch it seemed that those were the correct numbers. Of course it didn't help any. If anyone has any more ideas let me know. I think I'm going to put it on the shelve for a while. I've gotten too many headaches from messing with this radio. I know its something simple and I will be kicking myself in the butt when I do find it.

Like I said, if anyone has any more ideas I'm open.

I might just send it to Sparky's because it pissed me off too many times if you know what I mean!
I have 25 that I've been trying to fix at the same time and it makes me feel like I'm beating a dead horse!
 

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