On 16 Feb 2008 at 16:50, John Marranca, Jr wrote:

Happy Saturday, everybody!

Before I pull out a ladder, and climb to the roof of my garage to check for any antenna problems, is it just me...or is AO-27's signal degrading?

It seems to be in much worse condition than a few months ago.

John KB2HSH

As related to your issues John My FT-847 start developing a curious problem on the VHF chassis SO-239 connector. Since about one year i got a half power on the TX meter while a SWR in line meter was showing a perfect 1.1 swr level on various antennas, Even reducing the power level the max output remains at about 25 watts at the max power level setting.

As the problem was intermittent i was able to solved it when playing with various coax jumper and i concluded that my jumpers cable where faulty. As soon as i start to plug and unplugged a coax cable with their PL-259 the problem start to reappear half power and degrading reception.

Last week i was attaching my 2.4ghz downconverter to check the AO-51 S band pass and here it goes again half power from the rig and degraded reception. A bit tired to squeeze the PL-259 with pliers i made a brand new jumper cable and i recheck it about 10 times on a dummy load and he was perfect. I try it on the Yaesu but i still get the same problem and on any antenna plugged in the SO-239 i got the same problem. As i have now a steady problem i open up the Yaesu and when i take out the UHF chassis connector he fell off the chassis the center connector pin was only making contact to the printed circuit board pin mechanically but the "VERY LIGHT" Yaesu solder was broken. I say lIght because the other one next to it was perfect and i just hope the two other are as good as this one.

End of a long period of frustrations and gremlins playing havoc overnight ... I even keep the rig on overnight when i want to work something important the next morning!!

Just hope this can help reducing the unnecessary stress on someone else P.S. Don't blame your soldering/connectors poor skills too quickly they are much better than you may think!

Luc Leblanc VE2DWE Skype VE2DWE www.qsl.net/ve2dwe WAC BASIC CW PHONE SATELLIT