The first problem was the radio. When I removed the antenna connection the weather station would pop in when just the ground connection was being made via the bnc sleeve. When I would push down on the bnc connector and the center conductor would start to seat, it caused the WX station to go away. I then tried the radio with a rubber duck antenna with the same results. This tells me the center pin on the radio's antenna connection is hosed. Not wanting to effect a field repair I replaced the radio.

I installed one of the Uniden radios. This required a new power supply at the computer end and a new connector up top. Everything needed to be soldered again. Getting the connections soldered made the radio start to receive MCPs and lots of intermod. I was able to slightly reduce the problem by installing a ferrite choke on the power/audio line. That stops that wire from acting like an antenna and shoving more bad signals into the radio.
[This is a different than usual install - we ran audio cable from the server to the radio. The antenna is on the roof about 130 feet away and the only way to get to it was through an elevator shaft. Because of that we could NOT bring power up to the radio and settled for a '3 wire' connection - Power and Ground up, Audio and Ground down.]

Having the spectrum analyzer there I did a site survey. I could hear paging tones coming in on our signals. I tried turning the antenna to point the opposite direction toward Overlook. This made the paging tones more intense. So I turned the beam back the way it was.

The spectrum analyzer shows a strong noise floor. It would be like you and I try to carry on a conversation at a football game with the crowd noise in the background. The noise is coming from our fine friends at Clear Channel down the street (1000 ft west). Their studio to transmitter links are about at the 4th harmonic of what we want to receive. Their transmitters are on all of the time sending the audio from the studios to the mountain top. Also that signal is wide FM and very high fidelity to carry the music. Our radio is just overwhelmed. The result is the error rate is about 30% most of the time.

Now the other problem is the paging. It is also on the top of the Clear Channel compound tower. See the picture. It is the antenna that is a groundplane at the top right of the tower. Paging transmitters are about 400 to 600 watts and spew out in all directions. So when a page is sent out it covers what our radio hears. There is no way to cure this without spending thousands of dollars on perfessional equipment and huge notch filters.

For giggles I went over to the other building to measure for interference. That place is really bad due to the channel Six broadcast compound being close by. Forget about it. There is enough RF floating around there to make you sterile. And broadband RF at that too. TV uses so much bandwidth. There are two TV stations there, along with two radio stations plus a host of other junk too. Yikes! [ We have another building West of downtown Spokane that we .. um were .. considering for a antenna and host as it looks up West(South) the Hangman valley and the Lakeside sub.]

I have enclosed new photos with the current radio. I also repaired the box's weather seal. I have elevated the radio to keep it out of any water that might get in the case.

I will look for a table to put all of the computer gear upon. We need to finish that area so nothing gets unplugged, or the wiring cut or disconneted by mistake.