Yaesu FT-100 repairs or The Perils of Buying Someone Else's Junk on eBay (Story time Part 1)

A couple of years ago I decided I wanted a Shack in a Box radio, one with HF, VHF and UHF, something to put in the car, take away on day trips, maybe work a few hills, parks etc.

A sensible person might have considered something like an FT-817/8 or the IC-705, nice, small, portable and able to be powered from a battery pack.

Except I wanted a bit more than 5-10W and I also wanted cheap.

The FT-817 was also out of my price range and the FT-818 and IC705 were just rumours.

IC-706, FT-897 were more than twice my budget and nearly all 'widebanded' (code for ballsed up and abused by a CBer, usually with pictures of the radio in TX on 27.555 or 27.78125)

Eventually I found a faulty Yaesu FT-100, no TX on any band, VHF/UHF had failed and, it was claimed, HF TX had 'just stopped' but RX was fine across all bands.

Worst case I would end up with a decent receiver, I could live with that if the price was good.

VHF/UHF TX was probably the SRF7043 PA transistor, common problem and there are 'ways' to fix it.

HF TX was throwing up the dreaded SWR alert (another well known problem on these radios) which suggested the HF PA wasn't necessarily faulty. 

I did some reading about likely problems, the FT-100 has a bit of a reputation for SWR problems causing HF TX to stop working but there are a bunch of factory mods which are claimed to fix the issue.

Worth a chance if the price was right.

Except the seller was asking for a lot of money, nearly as much as working examples were selling for so unsurprisingly it wasn't selling.

I watched it go through eBay a couple of times with a couple of price reductions which made the price just 'silly' instead of stupid until, eventually it was relisted with 'Make an Offer'.

So after resisting it for a few days and in a moment of madness, I made an offer. 

I offered *way* too much and as soon as I'd hit the 'Submit offer' button I began hoping the seller would reject it so I could walk away.

Unfortunately my offer was accepted within 10 minutes. 

*NUTS*

To Be Continued.

Pt. 2

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