In Which The TS-440 Becomes Jealous Of...

[WBear2GCR]

A short tale.

So here at the WBear2GCR/2 QTH, I had set up my TS-440S. After several helpful comments on the audio quality, it was determined (by the politburo, of course) that the resurrection of the Global Dominator, AKA the Glug Champeen 350 would commence. Which it did.

Perhaps the 440S was intimidated by the sheer bulk and weight, not to mention the hum and glow of the Glob Champagne 350. I don't know. But a few weeks back, the main tuning knob of the 440 siezed and would absolutely not turn! Now this is rather odd because the 440 uses only a digital rotary encoder, which consists of a shaft turning a bit of circular material with lines on it and an optical pick up. Nothing much there at all. In fact it was SO siezed up that a pliers on the shaft could not free it! Wow.

Well, no big deal, right? Yep. I've been in to the 440 before, no fear. Anyhow I opened the unit, swung down the front, and revealed the CPU/control board that covers the encoder. I figured, I'd pull the encoder, open it, free the shaft, lube it (with lifetime guaranteed silicone grease!), and put it back, done. Worst case, I'd destroy the encoder and buy another (used) one on epay, put that in. No fears, mate!

Trying to not get too very detailed here. Disassembled the sucker, and found that it was necessary to literally use a small hammer to force the aluminum shaft from the brass shaft bushing of the encoder. Notice, aluminum and brass? Anyhow turns out that the brass galled onto the aluminum shaft after 34 years of use - the lube "went away". It left a small bit of brass embedded in the aluminum. So I clear that up with appropriate abrasives, and re-lubed, etc, re-assembled and prepared to remount.

When I noticed that the back of the CPU boards were covered in white "schmutz". Looked like some sort of odd corrosion product. Clean it. Brush, a bit of alcohol, done. Nice. Re-assemble, left out the part about taking off a dozen or so PIA little white molex connectors, I did. Put them back in. Reverse process, fire it up.

Anticipation.

Complete mumbo jumbo on the display. No function work. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Zero. Everything is properly connected and plugged in.

I say that the 440 became jealous and decided to let me know.

So, I bought a junker chassis on epay, transplanted the whole CPU board assembly (two boards with soldered in
ribbon connections, one lays on top of the other) into the 440.

Held breath. WORKS! Yay!

Phew.

No idea why the original board quit.
The battery on board was essentially dead - replacing that had no effect.
No idea how it continued to work with that dead ROM battery in it.

Well, it's back. Serial number says built in 1981.
Hard to believe this "modern" radio is so many decades old, and that they are selling in working condition for
more than I paid for mine which I bought when the radio was "old" about 7 years after this one was made!

Hope you all enjoyed the short tale.
Fwiw, real bears all have short tails, and I think that is the focus of a Rudyard Kipling short story.

                                 _-_-

PS. the boards with the orange back up battery are the CPU/Control boards. That's the edge of the Glop Chimpeon 350 next to the 440 on the bench. I'm thinking that while sitting next to each other like that, naked and all as they are, that they had a chance to work out their differences and that all is well now...

[K1JJ]

So, I bought a junker chassis on epay, transplanted the whole CPU board assembly (two boards with soldered in
ribbon connections, one lays on top of the other) into the 440.

Good job!

The boards are so crammed and inaccessible today, it seems to be the only possible way for an "average" technician to repair those rat nested rigs... change a board.

I can't imagine the talent needed to troubleshoot that nested brown center board down to the component level.  Still, the best Icom/Yaesu/Kenwood  techs are expected to do it within an hour or two... amazing.

In the 70's I was a pretty good tech and could fix anything in the Motorola shop of that day. But then one day a first generation cellular rat nest came in for repair. It was jammed packed with LSI chips, digital readout wires, etc. They gave it to me to fix and my rep was on the line. Within ten minutes I had shorted out the main board so that the readout no longer worked. It went downhill from there and we ended up sending it back to Motorola for repair.   I knew my long-term repair gig was up after that episode. It was just a matter of time. In the next decade most of the 2-way shops changed drastically and some went the way of the TV repair shops. A new breed of technician evolved that could program digital rigs and change boards efficiently. Right after that episode I moved on to a new career and kept electronics as a hobby...

I have a great respect for modern day techs who feel comfy troubleshooting these modern rigs down to the component level. Absolutely amazing getting in there and not doing more damage wit fat fingers.

T

[Opcom]

A real technician today, one with 20-30 or more years hands on with generations of technology, has a difficult time of it due to the many hacks out there offering cheap prices on slipshod or slap-dash fixes. Not repairs.. and frequently no alignment.

If the swapped in board makes the equipment work and  the cheap fixit man is offering bargain basement prices he can't afford to spend time doing alignments. Even the SDR having only a few adjustments or the random equipment that is aligned via computer interface has to be checked so that it meets specs.

In most cases the cheap-minded customer will save nothing because the time for alignment of a swapped-in board, often 10-50 years old and never re-calibrated, costs money. Furthermore, a used board or part carries no guarantee upon itself nor the time to R&R+align it.

I have nothing against swapping a board if the old one can't be fixed economically or if the customer insists upon it, as long as they understand that the time to fix any defects with their used item cost money to deal with, their money can be wasted when customer-supplied used parts are involved, and that all of the risk surrounding a customer-supplied used part is naturally and solely the customer's.

The cheap sort of ham, the 'gimmies', and the other selfish people have this all wrong and it's best to put it in writing before servicing their stuff. Sometimes it is best to refer the most intractable of them to a competitor.

I get calls from time to time where the caller says "but so-and-so only charges x per hour for labor" or "but so-and-so gives free estimates". The only reasonable reply to that sort of wheedling is that my competitor knows what his work is worth.

Some customers want a cheap fix so they can flip something. Should anything go wrong they will be the first to point their own unhappy customer at the serviceman that fixed it.

There are solutions to all of this, and they are simple enough. If a used part is to be employed, I prefer to procure and supply it so that any problems are found and fixed and there can be some guarantee extended on the job. I love to directly answer the phone and talk with technically minded customers and explain the problem and sometimes the repair procedure to them. People like to know what they are paying for and the information helps remove objections to the cost of a proper repair.

As a former manager I know this retains the best customers and convers potentially troublesome customers into ones you are happy to see. Just because a customer can't fix his own gear does not mean he does not take an interest in it. If a customer ask for details then he should be told at a level he will be satisfied with.

[W6TOM]

  I recently retired as a technician for a utility company's communications department, when I was hired in 1986 there were a few who repaired mobile radios. As time went on the increasing complexity of the equipment and what was required for parts which in some cases were proprietary made repair difficult or impractical.

  When I retired last summer it was either sent in for repair if still in warranty or went into the ewaste pile, in a few cases where repair made economic sense the item was sent back to the manufacture's repair facility.

   

[WD5JKO]

    I think the Bear did good. The availability of a spare PCB negated the need to troubleshoot the bad one. Still, that was a crap shoot where the new board could have been worse than the old one, or just the same. More likely the connectors/cabling could have been the problem. Its still possible that the original PCB was good, but something tampered with in the repair process caused the major fault, then when replacing that PCB, the problem was unknowingly fixed. Or perhaps the cleaning solvent on the original PCB had not fully evaporated yet causing the fault. The good news though is that it works now, and it isn't worth looking back.

   At my work we started servicing powerful class (e) SS amplifiers about 3 years ago. Think of 3 KW RF at 13 dot 56 MC, in a shoe box fed by 208vac 3 phase, and water cooled. A busted one is still worth $5K-15K so it is worth the time to go down to the component. Depending on the vintage, we either have or do not have PCB schematics. Contemplating a PCB repair w/o a schematic is always challenging. Then have it be multi layer with SMT parts on both sides makes it all the more fun. Fortunately, the digital stuff is mostly logic gates with the occasional flip flop. No zillion pin square digital ASICS. So without a schematic, it is still fairly straightforward to define the power and ground pins, and then look for inputs and outputs. Just powering up the PCB might reveal the problem due to a hot chip, high current draw, or a bad clock. A good visual under extreme magnification finds a lot of stuff too. I remember once tracing a signal from top to bottom, back to top, and then to an open collector driver chip. The SMT pin for the signal was not soldered at the driver chip! With a microscope I could see that pin lifted, like a tiny Morse code key.  Once I put on the repair hat, and tune out the QRM (grumpy boss, and co-worker BS sessions), then the problems start to reveal themselves. Success rate thus far is over 80%. Persistence pays off sometimes.

Jim
Wd5JKO

[Steve - K4HX]

Wanna do component level repair on modern day boards? Get a microscope, a static mat and wrist band, a high end solder sucker and some specialized solder tips. A solder bath wouldn't hurt also.

[K1JJ]

I think the Bear did good. Jim
Wd5JKO

Interesting comments. Good technicians who have walked the walk and stuck with it to the end.

Yes, absolutely. Bear did good. It's a sigh of relief to get through a technical mess like that and come out on top without doing more damage.  Fixing it any way we can is a good day.

Steve - you probably remember when I dumped 100 watts into my HPSDR receiver board a few years back. I looked at it with a magnifying glass and could barely see the RF input chip. Black soot.  The chip was gone and the board tracks were toast.

I sent it to a German magician who got in there with specialized tools and a microscope and fixed it for $100. What a relief.  

I suppose the next phase will be more of the same. Smaller, smaller and more complex. Most modern troubleshooting is now done by plugging the rig / board into a computer and taking the recommendations.  The support equipment can be very specialized and expensive.

As you have found, even fixing an older Yaesu FT-1000D from the early 90's can be a challenge; especially when they no longer make some critical parts available.

T

[W6TOM]

 I was a computer technician from 1979 to 1986, repaired peripherals, mainly printers along with the interface boards from our computer system and later disc drives. All were 7400 series IC's with a few LSI chips, 40 pin and those were in sockets. An accurate schematic, usually one I had copious notes on, a good weller iron and a Tek 465 scope.

 With few exceptions those days are gone. About 4 years ago I built a device that allowed us to run 1200 and 9600 baud on a data radio system. It was TX and RX logic, with pin diode switches based on 7400 series IC's. I built four of these from plans provided by an engineer who worked with me. I had to make a few design changes, using open collector gates for the pin diode switches. I was probably one of the few guys among my coworkers who knew how to do the "lost art" of building.

 The devices were used to switch a 1200 baud AFSK radio system to a 9600 baud FSK system without taking the system down to do the change.

[K1JJ]

Back in 1988 my Yaesu FT-930 was shocked by an arcing linear amplifier changeover relay and the receiver front end circuitry was wiped out.  

I sent it back to Yaesu in California. A VERY smart Japanese technician got assigned to the repair job. He sent back a baggie filled with blown out parts.... diodes, transistors, coils, etc. It looked like a grab bag. He spent only 2 hours on it and the bill was less than $150.  He even tested the TX RF board and said the driver transistors were out of spec and replaced them.  He said the TX IMD improved. Unreal!
This guy must have been an alien to pull it off so quickly and efficiently.

These super-tech guys do exist - especially if they have been trained specifically on a few key rigs.

As a fitting epitaph, years later I axed for him again and they said he was back in Japan and only worked on the latest LSI nightmare rigs. You know the ones.... the rigs that cost over $10K and you pray you didn't get a lemon.

T

[N2DTS]

I had a TS440 when they were new, good mobile rig and the CB guys loved them as they had 40 memories...
I did all kinds of mods installing reed relays to bypass filters on TX and the general coverage TX mods.

Besides a few things at the higher power level component level I would think most stuff goes in the trash if it stops working.

At work, some things are repaired because they are no longer made and I suspect the same problem happens 90% of the time on most of the stuff.

It must take a lot of man hours to trouble shoot a logic control of a complex device.
 

[KD6VXI]

Congrats,  bear!

My name ts440sat was also knocked unconscious .   I had a 5 pin din,  lived in the mountains,  and didn't want to wait for a new connector to come, she  I connected the sb220 with a 5 pin din.

Now,  for those familiar,  this can work,  or with one pin wrong ( I had 1 pin indexed off)  you can really screw your radio up.

Yes,  110 vdc into the 8 volt line.

I replaced the ICs on the same board,  bear.   That got me a working receiver.   So,  for a couple years,  I enjoyed my R5000 :-)   TX was completely dead.   The light for TX would come on,  but that was it.

Fast forward a couple years,  I broke it out again.   Turned out to be a faulty transistor on  if board.

Had to teach myself digital logic,  build a logic probe,  etc.   But totally happy now.  

The TS440 is getting very long in the tooth,  but it still gets me better TX reports than my newer yeasu,  and the audio is a dream to listen to compared to almost any dsp based I've had here.

Maybe one day our 440s can meet on 3885.

Oh, and your story really scares me.   Mine is staring VERY hard at the newly acquired Viking II.   Maybe they DO get jealous!

--Shane
KD6VXI

[flintstone mop]

The TS440 was a faithful rugged soldier. Its value held up for the longest time. A mint TS440 SAT might still command $500. There were a few buggy problems with the PLL circuits. My 440 unlocks once in a while and that is due to a cracked core in a can on the PLL board. A "new rebuilt" board with the shmegma removed and aligned is $200. I don't have the patience to go in there and try to remove the cracked core and go through adjustments. Unfortunately the dam thing has my SS number scratched into the chassis in two spots and I can't even sell it as a parts unit.
I bought this new in 1987. My first Ham rig. About $1400.
The SS # was recommended by local police departments at that time to identify your stuff in case of burglars breaking into your house or car. Today an exposed SS # can lead to identity theft.

[N2DTS]

Scratch it up so you can not read the number...