[Yaesu] FT1000MP overheating and audio failure

[Robert Shohet]

Hi,

While operating the WPXCW contest this weekend, on Friday night my left FT1000MP began to become warmer than the right radio.  Since I have some antenna controllers partially blocking some of the vents on the top of the chassis, I didn’t think much of it until the radio did not seem to want to cool off after I moved the controllers away from the vents.  I thought that this was odd since I wasn’t transmitting with the left radio – and by contrast, the right radio was cool even though I was transmitting on it almost continuously.

Then, all of a sudden, the left radio shut off by itself!  I pushed the on button and it would not turn on.  Then after ~15 minutes, I was able to turn it back on.  But it stayed very warm.  Hmmm...  This annoying process repeated more and more frequently on Saturday morning – turning itself off and then having to wait about 15 minutes before I was able to turn it back on.  Finally, the radio failed and when I turned it back on, there was NO audio and the swr was infinite!

Realizing that there could be many potential failure points, I took the coax from the left radio and hooked it up to the right radio and everything was fine – swr was low, the left amp worked at full power and everything was normal.

Then I took the coax from the right radio and plugged it into the left radio and the swr was infinite with NO audio.

Clearly the left radio had the failure not the amp or coaxial cables.

Does anyone know what might have failed and what needs to be fixed?

Tnx & 73

Bob, KQ2M 

kq2m at kq2m.com