As predicted by the seller, my Yaesu FT-757GX arrived last Friday.
This was not an eBay sale, and let me tell you, I've kinda been sweating bullets. I sent the guy a money order and he sent the radio to me. The rig originally was on eBay, and I had been wanting to buy it using Buy It Now. Someone snuck ahead of me and snagged it.
I e-mailed the seller and let him know if his buyer didn't work out to let me know, I'm interested. The seller e-mailed me back saying the buyer wanted the radio sent to an unverified address, etc. etc. He wanted to use accounts that weren't his to pay for it, so the seller withdrew the sale, which was OK with me.
This wasn't a deal for a mint condition radio. It might be a 7 or so. It showed wear. That's ok, the price was right.
I wasn't disappointed when I opened the box. The venerable old soldier smelled like smoke, so I spent a lot of time scrubbing the smell off it. That made it look better, certainly. But did it play?
The first thing I found was the cooling fan has an issue. The fan is on all the time, which is abnormal. The fan should kick on only when the heatsink hits a certain temp. The fan could have been wired to 12vdc so it runs all the time, I'll have to look and see.
I e-mailed the seller to find out if the fan was always noisy or if it was a recent development. He was honest enough to tell me that it was that way when he had it, but he wasn't aware it was unusual or incorrect.
The other issue with the fan is the noise. The fan is very noisy. It has a click in it, one click per rotation. I pulled the case apart thinking maybe something was hitting the fan blade, but I don't think that's it. It's just the fan is noisy. I would like to replace the motor and have it work correctly again. If it's a wiring issue, it might be something I can fix. Otherwise I may have to send the thing off.
While the noisy fan was distracting, it sure didn't hamper my enjoyment of the radio this weekend. This was the CQ WW DX contest, so I made a number of contacts on 15 meters.
PERFORMANCE. I suspect this rig has been “tweaked” as it cranks out the stuff. That may be why the fan is set to run full time — the power output pots have been maxed out. The audio is good and punchy, and the thing did an admirable job during the contest. I had no problem busting pileups like I normally do with my PRO3.
Maybe its just the fact I'm letting nostalgia overrun my opinions here, but this FT-757GX is not as susceptible to front-end overload as my first 757. I was able to pretty easily work stations 2 khz or less apart, and that's not shabby. The hand mic that came with it is not the original Yaeus, but that's OK. As well as it works I'm not going to complain!!
I was so enamoured with the rig that I used it for our local 10 meter net. I got great reports with it — in fact, one guy told me I was louder than normal! Ouchie for my 746PRO, which is my usual rig for the net.
I'm going to look at the fan maybe tomorrow just to see if there's something I can fix. Even if I can get it to function normally, i.e., only run with the heatsink gets hot, that would be an improvement over running full time.
ADDITIONS COMING FROM EBAY. I don't know if I'll regret it or not, but I won the auction for a 1913 Vibroplex Original. It needs some work, but it is relatively complete and original. It's the oldest bug I've got now, and it appears to need some TLC. I'm going to keep this one as-is until I restore a few other bugs …
In addition to this new bug (like I need a new bug!), I missed a great looking Speed-X 501 T-handle chrome bug earlier this weekend (darn it!); I did buy a Yaeus mic for the 757 and the SB-1400; I also bought a Heil adapter for the Yaesu gear (it was cheaper than the parts it takes to make one). More to come, stay tuned!
It's late and I need to get some sleep.
73 es CUL …. de KY4Z SK …. dit dit ….