SIMPLE REPAIRS

Simple repairs are important to the amateur radio operator because repairs cost money that better could be spent on new or additional equipment. In todays world to bring a piece of electronic equipment to a repair shop, if you can find one, will cost $45 to $60, just for the bench fee. The actual repair hourly cost usually is at least $50 an hour plus parts. On the average a repair will run $100 to get the simplest job done.

There are some simple maintenance jobs that the most electronically deprived ham can perform that in the end will save many hundreds of dollars.

The simplest of these is to clean all contacts. They may look shiny, but they need to be clean. The antenna connection is the first that needs to be cleaned up. A piece of emery cloth or fine steel wool will do the job. The mike connectors are the second; The other end of the BNC should be cleaned. And do not forget the power plug. After you have cleaned these. Disconnect the battery and the clean the battery contacts. And do no forget the contacts inside the radio. Again, fine steel wool or emery cloth will do the job. Finish off by polishing all the contacts will denatured alcohol. If you want to you can acquire at an electronic shop an electronic cleaner called de-tox but this is really unnecessary. When you have finished the contacts and the cloth is still wet with alcohol, clean the outside of the radio.

If the buttons on the front of the radio do not always make contact, spray them with a little bit of alcohol or de-tox. Wipe off the access, Go get your wives hair-dryer and heat the front of the radio for at least 5 minutes or until it is hot. This will blow away all accumulated oil from your finger that is under the buttons.

Now is a good time to tighten all the screws. You will find some of them are loose. The radio has over time heated up and expanded, cooled and contracted and the screws naturally loosen themselves. Remove the knobs, they just pull off, and spay alcohol or de-tox on them. Keep at mind always the radio should be off and the battery disconnected.

Now let us talk about battery maintenance. First that 9 or 12 volt battery that you have on the end of the radio cost about $60. It is rechargeable but if not maintained correctly, it will lose the ability to be recharged. There are many different theories on how to recharge a battery. Here is the one that I have found to work. When the radio indicates that the battery is low, don't recharge it immediately. Leave the radio on, turn on the dial light, and let it sit until the display goes out. Turn off the radio, and let it sit for 15 minutes. Turn it back on and you will notice that the display is again lighted. Repeat this process until the dial light will not come on. Now it is time to recharge. Plug in your charger and let it sit for more than the recommended time, 15 hours or more. After 15 hours, turn the radio back on verifying the dial light is on, usually (function-light) will accomplish this. and let the radio sit until it has fully discharge a second time. Recharge and your battery should back in good working order.

Did you know that there is a second battery in your radio? It is a small battery to maintained the memory. This battery rechargers off the main battery and must be recharged at least once a month. If you keep the battery off the radio. You will lose the memory and any frequencies you have stored, if the main battery is allowed to go flat. This small battery will maintain the memory for only about six months. So you should keep the battery charged so you will not have any problems with memory charge. The small battery is called a lithium battery. If at some point you can not get the memory to hold, then this lithium is probably bad. You will need to send it to a repair shop to be repaired. The life of the battery is 5 to 7 years. If the battery goes bad you can turn the radio on, reset your memories and leave the radio on full time. It will not hurt the radio. You will need an outside power supply to accomplish this.

Here in Florida it is very damp most of the year. Your radio will pick up dampness in every day use. One of the ways to dry the radio is to transmit on high power until the battery case gets hot that will mean that the whole radio is hot and dry. Sometimes this is not possible; you may get the radio wet in a rainstorm or some other freak of nature. Find a shoe box and acquire a box of (damp rid crystal) at the drug store. Put the damp rid and the radio together in the shoe box together for a few days and your radio should be all right.

When you bought the radio, you received a belt clip loose in the box. You may or might not be installed it. The belt clip is a needed part of the radio. It was not put on because the manufacture knew you might take it off. The belt clip is needed if you will do much talking. The belt clip is considered a heat sink and helps keep the radio cool during transmission. If you are using you hand held as your main radio, the heat sink should be connected. If the heat sink came connected to the radio, this might be a good time to remove it. Put heat sink compound on the connecting screw and replace it.

If you have your hand held connected to an outside antenna or if you have a base station connected to an outside antenna keep in mind that the coax connectors have a tendency to work loose. Again, heat expansion cool contraction will loosen up all connectors. In Florida every occasionally we will have a storm off the ocean. The storm pick up salt water and deposit it throughout the land. It collects on our antennas. Salt will not conduct electricity or radio waves. You can see the salt as a white residue on shiny surfaces. Again just clean off the salt and every thing will be fine. You will be surprised when you start cleaning connectors how many you have in a transmission line.

Some of the things to check on. --- The battery saver should be on. All this means are that during the idle time the receive portion of the radio is only on part time. You will never notice it, but it saves 50 % of the battery drain. Expect for the battery recharge cycle , the light should be off. The environment that you place the radio in should be free from all RF example: the tube lights, some incandescent lights, dimmer switches, computers, thermostats, vacuum cleaners, microwave oven, power supplies plug in's (the little cubes) cell phone, all portable phones, and household power lines. This is a good place to mention the household electric ground. Have you checked it? It's located near where the power lines enter your home, and the phone line is connected. It is a metal stake inserted in the ground with a heavy duty wire connected by a clamp. Check this clamp to verify it is tight and clean.

One of the things we need to be realize is that the weakest link in a hand held is the rubber duck connector. This connector has a tendency is break and the portion of the connector that is on top he radio tends to loosen inside the radio. This is the weakest link in our radios. The next weakest link is the microphone and its cord and connectors. Replacement of the microphone is the easiest solution when someone reports that you are experiencing noise on your signal. Don't bother with name brand microphones, you can replace the microphone three or four times with a Radio Shack or equivalent microphone. The third weakest link is the on/off switch. Here, we have a situation that the manufacture has introduced a component that will fail and require professional repair. An easy fix is not to use this switch but to disconnect the battery. Another solution is to disconnect the battery permanently and run the radio from the power supply with an on/off switch that can be replaced easily and cheaply. One problem that occurs here is that if you do not leave the power supply of periodically and use the radio on, and off switch the internal battery will run down after about a month. The solution is to set a schedule where you leave the power supply on but turn the radio off. Even with the radio off the internal battery will charge. A few days in this mode will recharge the internal battery, and you can go back to turning the radio on and off with the power supply.