Disconnected the antenna wire from the tender body and attached a 8" piece of wire to it and ran it out the tether hole in the front, laying it on the top of the tender along side the handrail. Tested and PERFECT signal reception even from out-of-the-trainroom. The problem is definitely poor antenna signal reception via the tender body. Next step is to reconnect the wire to the tender body (going to extend it inside the tender with the new wire before it hooks to the tender body to give it a little more length,) and completely isolate the tender body from the rest of it.
I did some fooling around trimming back the long wire on top of the tender to make it less noticable and it seemed as I trimmed and tested that the actual length of the antenna wire somehow effects the signal reception. Longer with a big loop it would receive from anywhere. The shorter I trimmed the wire the closer I had to be for good signal reception, until I trimmed some more and the reception seemed to be stronger.
Weird?
Whatever; now it works, and I have a clue on why some other engines have weak signal reception, especially a couple of Atlas switchers.
Slow, but making progress!
