On Tue, 20 Feb 1996, Charles H. Harpole wrote:
> ICOMs are delicate radios. K4VUD
AA9AX writes:>
Let me tell you how delicate I think Icom are:
A year or two ago, my friend was over here with a beta version of the
Icom 736. We were fooling around with it, just for fun, trying to see
how it performed. I unscrewed the coax from the back of my tuner and
placed it on the 736 (I thought!) We even decided to listen to the audio
of the 736 on my IC-781. I figured that since the antenna was
disconnected from the tuner (which was connected to my 781), AND since I
cranked-in 30 db of attenuation, I should be safe. Well, the audio
sounded good, and I headed out to McDonald's for a couple of sandwiched
while my friend tried a few CQ's on the 736. He noted that it hadn't
autotuned easily on the normal mode, so he had taken off the bottom panel
and set the tuner to "WIDE", which fixed the problem. We figured it was
just sensitive to my 160 meter loop. He got full 100 watts out, and
started on his mission as I left.
A short time later, I returned to find him standing in the driveway
looking like a "beat dog"! I knew something was wrong, but would never
have guessed the problem.
He explained in his "sickliest" voice that we had unplugged the wrong
coax cable from the back of the tuner, and had instead plugged the
transmit output of the 736 DIRECTLY into the receive jack of my 781!
Well, SHIT HAPPENS, and I told him to not worry about it, and I even
found my idiocy somewhat humorous. We went inside and checked the 781
for performance. Believe it or not, it worked VERY WELL indeed, and even
surpassed the 736 on an A-B receive test. I had already invited a bunch
of young hams over for a fun (learning experience) SSB multi-op effort,
so we went ahead with the contest all night. We did as well as we
expected to do, and the radio performed well.
That was possibly the most expensive dummy load ever used by an amateur.
I'm only glad that my friend was getting many responses to his CQ's,
because he may have worked dozens of 'em, shooting a hundred watts of RF
right into the innards of Nellie Belle.
It was time for Nellie's tune-up anyway, so I boxed her up and sent her
to Icom in Bellevue to my favorite tune-up man, Charles Rocha. (I see now
that the repair date was 3/14/94.) They "located and resoldered cracked
and overheated joints on reg. unit. Located and replaced burned
components on RF and AT unit. Repaired burned foil traces on RF unit.
Replaced open pilot lamp. Complete check-out and alignment as needed."
From my viewpoint, my 781 took a lickin' and kept on tickin'. This
places it in a catagory far from "DELICATE". I hear lots of pros and
cons about radios, but I LOVE MINE! It's the "Daddy". (Whoops..."Momma")!
I've had a Kenwood TS-440SAT which played good but quit bigtime in the
middle of Field Day in '90 or '91. I've had the 765, with which I had no
problems, and the 781 has served me well for years. It is a tank.
Just one man's opinions. (Not a very smart one, at that!)
Steve Sample / AA9AX
Alias Steve Cannon (Read: Loose)
Whitman Sampler
Slim Whitman
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