The absence of failure on already repaired units would give credence to the
bad batch theory. Let's hope that's the case.
Regarding the CB finals, they do not have to pump these 5W from 1.8 to 450
MHz, so their job is somewhat easier.
However, that's no excuse for Yaesu. It seems there is a latent defect in at
least some of these radios.
I have operated mine in open circuit more than once (accidentally of course)
by having the antenna on the wrong connector.
knock-knock (this is me knocking on wood :-), my finals are still OK, so a
momentary operation into infinite VSWR is not always sufficient to blow
these finals.
Hope you fix the rig, because it is a nice little rig with a great receiver.
I am having a lot of fun with it. Right now, I use it mostly on 6m, it is
hooked up to a 4 element beam at 50' through 150 feet of RG-213, and when
the band is open, I have no problem making contacts. I have used it on HF
also with my R7. While it is not to be confused with a pile-up buster, I
have made some nice contacts, considering the declining sun spot cycle.
73,
Didier/KO4BB
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----- Original Message -----
From: "aa8gk" <aa8gk@...>
To: <FT817@...>
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 8:12 AM
Subject: [allowed] [FT817] Re: Anyone Besides Yaesu Replace Finals?
Sadly, because stoopid here hasn't used the rig since I got it last
year. The darn thing sat in a box. I should know better: my
philosophy is 'use and abuse' something while it is under warranty -
if it makes it past that date, you should be okay. Even so, how darn
many CBs are there out there that have been pumping 5 watts (or close
to it) into poorly matched antennas for years? I spoke with a tech at
Yaesu yesterday who was very nice and said he had no idea why they
had the influx of rigs needing the repair. He speculated Yaesu had
purchased a bad batch of transistors, but added that they were not
able to cause the finals to fail under laboratory conditions. I guess
the good news is, he said that once the burned out finals were
replaced with the new ones, the repair seemed to take hold and no
such radios came back to the factory a second time.
