G'day All,
Just thought I would relate my Easter weekend experience to you.
I spent the Easter period at my beach house. As usual, I took my FL-2100Z
with me because I wanted to snoop around the bands during the contest.
The amplifier is a very well travelled beast. I comes on many field day,
iota and holiday trips. It is compact, light and reliable.
Whilst I was operating I was noticing what I thought to be dirty relay
contacts on receive in the radio. It's an old but trusty TS-530. Hitting
the ptt a few times seemed to clear it. After a bit of mucking around, I
determined that the amplifier relays seemed responsible for the
intermittent receive in the radio.
As I disconnected the amp, I noticed that the "RF Out" connector was a bit
loose and it twisted as I undid the coax. It is the single hole, large nut
variety rather than the square flange, 4 hole type. I opened up the amp and
saw that the centre pin of the output connector was soldered to a small
circuit board containing the swr metering components. When I moved the
loose socket by hand, I could see the centre pin had come loose from the
circuit board.
No worries, a quick touch of fresh hot solder and problem solved.
Well, not quite.
After tightening the coax connector nut, putting everything back together,
it still didn't behave right. Moving the coax at the output socket still
gave me dodgy receive.
This time when I opened the amp, I desoldered the swr board from the socket
and turned it over. I could then see that it was a large plated through
type hole and it had lost permanent contact with the track on the circuit
board. When I had resoldered the pin earlier, I had only solved half the
problem. This time I soldered the plated hole to the track on the circuit
board making sure to leave the hole free of solder so that it would fit
over the output socket centre pin. I then tightened the socket, screwed the
board in place and then soldered the pin. This time all was well.
I had no more problems with the amp after that and I was very pleased to
get up on 40m and work a few good ones in the contest.
Morals of the story:
1: I always hated single hole mounting sockets and I still do.
2: If you feel a socket getting loose, attend to it straight away.
The repair shop at my beach house is very basic. The soldering iron is a
2.5 inch length of 5/16" copper rod flattened, filed and tinned at one
end. It has a hole drilled through it half way down its length and a piece
of 1/8" steel fencing wire, filed square and tapered, is poked through it
and serves as a handle. Looks more like a little hammer than a soldering
iron. The iron is heated by removing the cast iron cooking plate from the
gas barbecue, lighting the burner and putting the iron over the flame. The
rest of the workshop comprises a pair of combination pliers, 2 ft of resin
core solder, a philips screwdriver, a flat screwdriver a 2" paintbrush and
a working beer fridge, amply stocked.
You know, there's not much more that a good handyman could ever need. What
do you think?
Hope your Easter was fantastic too.
73, Alek. VK6APK
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