Friday night, Oct. 2, 2020
For the past couple of days I have been evaluating a rig I basically bought by accident.
Last week I submitted a low-ball offer on an Icom IC-756PROII listed as “for parts / repair.” Reading the listing closer, the seller said the radio seemed to function correctly in all areas but one — on SSB, the power wouldn’t go beyond 50 or 60 watts.
As I’ve written here before, I think very highly of the Icom 756 series — all of them, from the plain IC-756, the upgraded 756PROI, the PROII and the PROIII. The 2 and 3 still command sizeable prices on eBay, as I confirmed earlier this year when I sold my PROII and W4FWG’s PROIII.
Figuring that this particular PROII would make a great receiver, even if the transmitter was only half or 60 percent power, it would still be quite suitable for CW work. Based on this, I sent the seller a very lowball offer. Much to my surprise, the seller accepted my offer!
When the radio arrived, I decided I should check it out closely and see sort of problem the transceiver exhibited on transmit.
The rig transmitted full power on CW and FM modes; checking it with the included Icom base station mic, on SSB, the rig was transmitting full power. What gives??
Apparently, the seller was either a inexperienced or misguided ham, or maybe a CB’er who didn’t understand the difference between PEP and average output power.
In fact, the rig transmits full output in ALL modes. No low-power to be found (unless you intentionally cut back the power). Needless to say, it was a wonderful revelation to find that this rig I bought for half its value has nary a problem! I’ve used it the last few nights to check in on my CW traffic net.
Incidentally, 80 CW was so long tonight that the NCS in Lakeland, Fla., couldn’t copy any Georgia stations trying to check in. He could only copy me and Willis, AD4DX, both of us in Kentucky, both of us between 800 and 900 miles away. The signals were skipping over Georgia, I never heard a peep out of the 7 or 8 regulars who check in nightly.
STUDIO C ADDITIONS. I’m definitely going to add a third 6 or 7 foot table to the upstairs shack. I want more room to set up my older rigs without having to move one to hook up a second (or third). I still have my Hallicrafters twins I need to try out. I want to keep my SB-102 station in place, as well as my Tempo 2020 station with VFO and matching speaker. And of course, I need to keep one table open for boxing up eBay sales.
SPEAKING OF EBAY SALES. This weekend I have to box up my National NCX-500, which sold overnight. Glad to see one of the two National transceivers attract a buyer.
ALINCO REPAIR. I’ve emailed a Alinco service center to check on having the mic gain SMT trimmer pot replaced in my Alinco DX-SR8T. They’re either not getting my messages or covered up with work as I’m not getting any response. And this is a relatively simple repair — don’t need to remove anything but the bottom cover, unsolder the old one and replace it. If it wasn’t SMT I would do it myself, though as hard as they are to get a response from, I’m tempted to jury rig a replacement pot by soldering a larger pot by connecting wiring to the original pot’s three solder points. Don’t tempt me, hi hi!
73 es CUL …. de KY4Z … SK SK ….. (dit dit) ….