N2MG continued:
>Yep, Yaseu tech dep't told me they never heard of any problem with the
>inverters (TF1 or the whole board) - that what I heard was some kind of
>Internet hoax. "Well, gee," I said, " it's funny, then that the hoax helped
>me identify the exact part (TF1) *immediately*." He had no response.
That is not good to hear. This denial could either be somewhat clueless
tech, or tech fed up with customers moaning about turn on delays, or
maybe indicative of overall denial by Yaesu of backlight problems in
general.
Having been on the other side in previous lives, I can very much appreciate
the second reason. There are lotsa hams out there that you wished
didn't buy your product.
>The inverter board does appear to be outsourced - typical in the US for
>backlight inverters. We always outsource them at work - but I was somehow of
>the mind that the Japanese was less prone to this kind of
>outsourcing...silly me.
It all depends - I've seen both approaches in JA-made kit, both in the
consumer & professional (b'cast) electronic product industries.
With Yaesu & its inconsistency in design across its products, I wouldn't in
the least be surprised that for another model they do their own switcher.
>I've read a lot about the slow starting display/backlight problem...not sure
>that it could be the TF as well, but maybe? Anyone try that?
One of the reasons I posted the suggestion here - Sod's Law dictates that
despite three or four hard failures on my MPs in VR2 & 9M6, now none are
acting up - I hope somebody can give it a go & share their experience with
us. I've only seen one or two instances of slow turn on & admittedly a hard
failure is always preferable to an intermittent.
When you're sitting in Borneo facing driving the rig blind in the next contest
& dunno why the darn thing went dark & aren't getting much help from the
manufacturer, one replaces both tube & supply. Let's hope that somebody
stumbles across our posts & gives it a go & reports the results. I'm sure
there are others out here who would benefit by avoiding repatriation of rig
for repair.
But then again, from N2MG's chat with Yaesu USA tech described above,
it looks like there might not be much advantage having relatively easy access
to tech support of the calibre one might expect over there (no need to decipher
Jinglish, large customer base that dictates regional office must do more than
sell, etc, etc).
73, BW2/VR2BrettGraham
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