On 2025-01-15 21:36, Clint VE3CMQ wrote:
The newer rigs are great but good luck if they fail.
They really aren¡¯t repairable after a few years
*** Yup. I was on the West Coast swap net a few weekends ago with my Signal/One. The
net control congratulated me for succeeding in fixing the thing. I told him it wasn't that
bad. Mostly discrete components, schematics available. Some of the parts hard to find, but
none impossible.
Compare that to a modern rig with a big ASIC in the middle - 200 pins, surface mount, maybe
BGA, no real data. My FTDX10 has a problem with the CAT control over USB; I found the responsible chip, and replaced it. Still no USB CAT. No possibility of troubleshooting it - to get at that side of the main board, you have to undo approximately umpteen cables around the perimeter of the board. You can get the board out, but it ain't gonna work with everything disconnected. I talked to tech support at Yaesu - they don't fix'em either. They just replace. That'll be about a grand, please.
- Jerry, KF6VB
