The damage that you do to cell phones and radios when you submerge them
usually happens when you turn them on. Believe it or not, water is not
very detrimental unless it causes a component to short out. This is what
I do when a device is dunked.

Do not turn it on.

Remove the battery ASAP.

(Optional) Soak the device in distilled water. You can get it at most
grocery stores. Distilled water will dissolve out any minerals or
contaminants that got inside the radio during the dunking.

Put the device, without the battery, in an electric convection oven at
140 degrees and leave it there for a couple of hours. You can do this at
120 degrees or even lower, but most ovens will not go that low. Don't
use a gas oven. Gas introduces too much moisture into the oven.

Another option is to use a blow dryer on the warm setting. To dry the
device out properly takes some time. So don't think that you can do this
in ten or even twenty minutes.

Several years ago I bought the wife a table-top convection oven that she
could use as a third oven when she was cooking holiday meals. It is
perfect for this sort of thing. It has great airflow with precise
temperature controls. Air flow is important to get the moisture out of
places like displays. So far I have had only one device, a cell phone,
that was dunked that didn't work afterwards. I think that is because my
kid tried repeatedly to turn it on after he went swimming with it.

If you dunk an electrical device in salt water, you can pretty much
write it off. Even if you get it working for a while, corrosion will
almost always set it in a few days or weeks. In that sort of situation
soaking the device in distilled water is not an option. In fact you need
to dump the distilled water out every day or two and replace it with new
water. Even then the odds of a long-term repair are low.

Pete - KD4CQZ

-----Original Message-----
From: FT-60@... [mailto:FT-60@...] On Behalf Of
MJ
Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2011 11:11 AM
To: FT-60@...
Subject: [FT-60] Water Damaged - suggestions...

Purchased this model after getting my license a number of years ago. I
remember reading (and the confirming) that this model was water
resistant prior to taking along with me on a canoe trip with the scouts.
During the trip we were sunk twice - completely submerging the canoe and
my radio.

I noticed immediately that water was able to get in and cause some
fogging to occur between the view window and the LCD. I didn't bother
turning it on, figuring something else go wet inside. Now, a week
later, the radio won't turn on.

Looking for suggestions - is this something I could repair? Is there a
shop you know of that could repair the damage cheaper than buying a new
(hopefully water proof) model?

Mike
KI6NLC

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links