Topband: ? Key-clicks FT1000MK-V field ?

[Augie Hansen]

Hi Bill,

>        This is what is so difficult for me to understand.  What is the
> cost of  a production change, which at the worst might be a new board
> layout and probably a few cents worth of components?  If you check the
> Inrad and W8JI mods, the components involved are trivial, and that's to
> modify older units (e.g FT-1000/D/MP).

I believe that Yaesu won't make the needed changes for two related reasons:

1) Updating the design of current "in production" ft1000-class transceivers
would be admitting that there is a problem. Yaesu has steadfastly denied
that a problem exists and management would rather fall on a sword than admit
the error.

2) Owners of current and earlier ft1000-class equipment might demand free
fixes for their "flawed" radios, possibly costing Yaesu big yen, dwarfing
any possible design and production costs associated with your proposed fix
for new production radios.

I've made most of the recommended modifications to my ft100mp and it does
work better than before, although still not really clean. But my K2 (with
its updates installed) now has a beautiful keying waveform. Also, the K2's
receiver worked perfectly in several recent 160m CW contests in which the mp
was virtually useless due to IMD and desensing. I live in southeast Denver
within a few miles of numerous AM broadcast stations (up to 50KW) and
several big-gun topband contest stations that literally wiped out the mp.
I'm hoping the INRAD roofing filter (ordered but not received) will help
reduce or eliminate that problem.

73, 
Gus Hansen / KB0YH