I have a Fisher 202 Futura Series receiver I restored several years ago with new electrolytic caps, four noisy transistors on the volume/tone board replaced and a proper alignment of the tuner.

It had been working great.

Anyways yesterday I decided to listen to a local radio station (haven't used the tuner in awhile usually just streaming audio from a computer) and the reception was not as good as it usually is.

I decided to take it home to test given in the building I work in at work I can only pick up 3-4 of the strong local stations with a pair of rabbit ears. That way I could determine if it was the building or the receiver

I failed to take the antenna home though so I am not sure that my results are accurate.

With a basic antenna (car magnet mount CB antenna with the metal antenna part connected to the receiver) I couldn't pick up stations at home as strongly as I normally can with other FM tuners and the Fisher has always been a fairly hot tuner far as reception is concerned.

I'm thinking an alignment issue, but I don't see how it could be.

Other than that what could be causing the problem?

Oddly enough I could touch either of the two tuning cap positions where the trimmer caps for the FM portion are and reception improved a great deal. Perhaps that is indicating a problem with the circuitry between the antenna and tuning cap.

Stereo works fine and the audio sounds good so I don't think it is a problem after the RF stages.

Going to take the antenna home today and see how well it receives.

If it is still poor then I'll check the front end circuitry given reception is much stronger when I touch either of the two tuning cap sections that is not the LO.

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson

D'oh

The LOCAL-NORMAL FM reception switch somehow got set to local.



I will test the receiver at work tomorrow.

Some ne'er-do-well was fooling with your stuff when you were not there!

Could be or perhaps I bumped the switch when reconnecting a speaker wire awhile ago.