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Re: memory power loss
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Clint I bought my first FT-60 back in circa 2012 or 2013. It was a novel package but it did not do as well as my old Kenwood 7800 as far as kicking off distant repeaters. Never could find the right antenna to work with distant machines beyond running a half wave dipole on it. Of course the 7800 did not have PL tone or I would have used it right on. A few years after buying the FT-60 my then wife got a mad on and tossed a lot of my gear one day. Fortunately she did not find the FT-60 but she did toss the Charging Stand and a back up FT-840 HF rig. Arrrrgh. So I allowed the FT-60 to languish a couple of years until finances settled down and the wife became the X. I was flying out of town on business and tossed the FT-60 in the luggage. When I arrived and unpacked in the hotel room, turned the knob to see the voltage indicate about 5.5 volts and then fade out. Next day after work I drove over to the burg's local amateur radio store and purchased a new battery and wall wart charger. A new charging stand was like$95.00. Whoa! Back in the hotel room I placed the new battery on the radio and then inserted the charger into the side plug.? The next morning upon checking the battery was still at about 7 volts. That seemed odd. Returned that evening and began investigating. It turned out there were some differing iterations of the FT 60 and the charging circuitry. Mine would not charge from the side plug, it required a charging stand. Not sue why the radios were changed but if you look at a later service manual you will find three different wiring lashups on the side plug. The only thing I found that worked on my side plug on the radio was a battery cable that plugged into the vehicle cigarette lighter plug, and it only powered the radio, it did not charge the battery when powered off. Faced with having to dole out $95.00 or the whole box purchase at $160.00 I just bought a new radio and used the stand to charge both radio's batteries. Later while looking on e-bay I spotted? Yaesu branded charging bases for the FT-60 being sold for $25.00 out of China plus around $3.00 for shipping via China Post. I figured it might be counterfeit but if nothing else, if the radio fit I could always replicate charging circuit in mine using a breadboard. Upon arrival I was surprised to find the base was pristine, just like my US purchased Yaesu, even the mold marks were crisp like my US purchased product. Lashing up a DVM and comparing the voltage on the charging stand pins when the radios were setting in the charger revealed the China source stand tracked the US purchased product within a few millivolts. I could find no difference.? So I lucked out sort of. Now I have two radios to track and keep charged. With my last auto purchase there is a 110 VAC outlet next to the cigarette lighter plug. So these days I keep one in the truck in the charger in a zipped canvas bag on the hump plugged into the 110 outlet. The charger seems to be ok with the pseudo sine wave of the inverter. Only problem I had was once when stopped for running down the road at Warp Speed and the police officer noticed the radio in the bag plugged into the outlet. He got all grades of spun up wanting to know what the radio was for and what it did. He was convinced I was a drug dealer monitoring police frequencies. It became apparent he knew as much about radio as I knew about Neurosurgery, zip, nada and big fat zero. Eventually I drove away but at least he knew hams existed after I explained it to him. I do miss knobs and thumbwheels but tech? marches forward. One day I will set down and build a PL tone generator for the Kenwood handheld. That is another retirement project. :-) Regards Chuck WD4HXG I had a quick QSO that evening and noticed the battery seemed to drop fairly fast. So I plugged it back into the wall wart On May 26, 2021 at 6:38 PM, "Clint Bradford via groups.io" <clintbradford@...> wrote:
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