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My watt of forlorn hope has arrived
12 November 2012 | by 
The FT790R that I picked up from eBay arrived today. It’s always a bit of a lottery buying old kit like that. But happily, it’s essentially in good condition. It receives and transmits fine.
I’ve found two problems so far. The first is that the battery tray looks like it may have suffered some misfortune and I guess that the springs have failed as when I took the NiCad batteries out and put 8 C cells in, the batteries slide about without making contact. I’ve emailed Yaesu to see if they have a battery tray. Failing that, it may be a case of ‘packing’ the batteries with some metal spacers.
The second issue is that the mode switch was a bit loose. I’ve cleaned it up and tightened it up a bit now and it seems more reliable on USB/LSB now. When it first arrived, it was a bit intermittent on those modes.
The rig sounds great! I fired it up on SSB and listened on the FT847 and it sounds good. Same on FM – so the really important bits are sound. It has a nice feel to it. Solid, just like I remember.
Of course, for the repeaters, it has no CTCSS which has precluded too much testing on the local boxes! It does have a 1750hz tone though.
Once I sort out the battery tray, I’m looking forward to taking it out portable.
One Response to “My watt of forlorn hope has arrived”
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Good start! I’m sure you know, but remember the external DC jack is +ve on the outer sheath and -ve in the inner part of the connector!
The only deficiency on mine is no front panel illumination – too tricky to fix. How’s your frequency accuracy?
Wish I was a bit closer to attempt a 790-790 QSO!
73, Rob.