Action 950's off fequency

[ddc]

Went to use my pair of Binatone 950's yesterday and found the received audio between both of them very distorted and quite..

Put both of them on my freq counter and found one 3kc high on channel one and the other 2kc low on channel one!!

Radios are about a year and a bit old and have hardley been used, but were fine when I bought them and been OK for the couple of times they have been used.. A bit of internal investigation found the correct trimmer (bottom of PCB on the display side) so now both are spot on frequency..

Just wondered if anyone else has had this issue with the 950?? I've a quad pack of Terrain 650's which are about two years old and they are fine..

[ChickenMadras]

Replying to a 10 year old post WooHoo

Once of my Binatone Action 950's (not bad little PMR446 radios) had drifted off frequency which was causing problems with poor audio when Rx'ed by the other unit. The above fix worked nicely. The radios dismantle quite easy so it is a simple fix, just use a gentle hand on the trimmer.

Posting here as I know a few TM1 users bought these radios back in the day and the above may come in handy.

[Mikel]

Funny enough you should mention the Action 950's as I came across mine last week in the bottom of a box in the loft. I originally bought them for my daughter to use when she went out with her friends a few years back, so that I could call her in for food etc.

I modified them both by fitting BNC sockets with longer more efficient antennas (Nagoya NA-701), turned the trimmer up a little that controls the transmitted audio level and adjusted the squelch trimmer to make it open with a lower signal strength and so effectively increase the range at the expense of a little noise breaking through on the odd occasion.

I also fitted a short lead with a power socket on one unit from the battery compartment, so that the one at home could be connected to a 6v power supply (Masterplug MVA 1200 multi voltage from Argos) but I could still fit battery’s in it if I needed to take it outside. They worked great in the local area at very low cost and got soaking wet a few time from the rain but they still worked OK when they dried out.

I had left them both with battery's installed (Poundland Kodak Alkaline) which is never a good idea but they had not leaked and still had life left in them and both radios still seemed to work fine.

I also tried the 'secret channel' - Hold the UP and DOWN whilst turning the radio on and the channel icon will say 'CH9' and the display will show 446.00625, but it will actually be transmitting on 447.005.

I have taken the battery's out and put them back in the box as my daughter these days has an iphone like her friends and wouldn't be seen dead with a walkie talky (image problem!).

Great little radios though and I think I bought mine in Aldi and pleased to see were still working but I didn't check them on the frequency counter mind you, but if they are off frequency then I will keep the trimmer adjustment in mind.

Obviously you can buy dual band Chinese handies probably cheaper than what I paid for my Action 950's but I still had some good fun with them and they are small and very light so were ideal at the time.

[ChickenMadras]

I modified them both by fitting BNC sockets with longer more efficient antennas (Nagoya NA-701),

Yeah I saw that mod when looking for my fix. Any easy enough mod to do on any PMR446 I should imagine.

turned the trimmer up a little that controls the transmitted audio level and adjusted the squelch trimmer to make it open with a lower signal strength and so effectively increase the range at the expense of a little noise breaking through on the odd occasion.

Ah, which trimmer is the squelch? That would be good to know for future reference.

I also tried the 'secret channel' - Hold the UP and DOWN whilst turning the radio on and the channel icon will say 'CH9' and the display will show 446.00625, but it will actually be transmitting on 447.005.

Eye.... checked that. It still works.

Obviously you can buy dual band Chinese handies probably cheaper than what I paid for my Action 950's

Yeah they do the job they were intended to do quite well.
FWIW.... I'd much rather non-radio geeks avoid the Chinese handies and Tx'ing on some random frequency
Tx'ing on 156 or 156.8 isn't going to end well. Legal PMR446 makes sure they can't do that

[Mikel]

Once you take the back off look down on the board and you will see the pots that can be adjusted. One for squelch and one for deviation level (mic volume).

Here is a picture of the board that I found elsewhere on this site: