Hi Jim,
Thank you very much. It seems it worked.
I literally bypassed the EMC filtering part of the RF section and immediately had a better signal.
With the two capacitors bypassed, the faulty section acted as a low pass filter. I noted the signal strength on all stations. The first stations were still present and
increasingly attenuated as I tuned up within the FM range. Above 98MHz, I wouldn't get any signal at all.
Once I also took out D4 and D5, the signal improved dramatically. The overall performance is even better than V1.0 of the board.
I am not too sure why but the D4-D5-C17-C18 section was the culprit.
Now reception is great! Thanks a million !
I have attached a spreadsheet signal data with three different installations: V1.0, V2.0 (as per the original design, faulty), V2.0 modified (D4-D5 removed, C17-C18 replaced by jumpers).
The results speak for themselves. Thank you very much for your suggestion JimB, it saved my V2.0 design.
Now, I have a worry, but it may be only with this board and not actually with the design.
As it is kind of an new issue, I'll start a new thread but will refer to here, as it relates to the same project.
Regards,
Jack