K2AS Ham Radio

Virtual Com Port Failures on Yaesu FTDX-101 Update Feb 2024 Everything in the original post is still true and valid, but Chris Day, ZL1CVD may have determined the root cause of the hardware failures in the radio. Best to watch his videos on the subject as documenting it here would take some effort. The short story that Chris theorizes is removing one unnecessary capacitor might eliminate this failure from happening. Part 1 Part 2 Original Post About This Issue I never got too worried about pursuing having “proper” ham shack grounding, for a few reasons: Everything works fine and I’m Making Contacts There seems like 6 million different opinions on what is the right way I don’t like articles/videos that say you must do this, or the world might end, but never show any empirical evidence that proves the point. Please, show me a shack with a stray RF problem, put in proper grounding, and prove the problem went away. I never see this. I did have grounding, just pro...

In order to complete my Drake novice station, I had been looking for a 2-NT transmitter for a month or two. I found one on eBay last week and purchased it. As with the 2-C receiver, I paid a bit more than I would have liked to. But supply is limited, and demand is high. I only had photos to go by, as the seller was not a ham and it was sold as is, untested. Cosmetically, it looked good. The front panel looked like a 9 out of 10. The rest of the unit looked dirty. There may have been some corrosion on the top of the chassis, which is not unusual. So I took a chance on it. Taxes and shipping add to an already inflated price. But I was pleasantly surprised when it arrived today. It was probably in a bit better condition than the 2-C was. I cleaned it up and looked it over. I had already ordered an electrolytic capacitor kit from Hayseed Hamfest. Looking under the chassis, there appeared to be more caps than I expected. The can cap was still in place, but there were addition...

Some progress made on the 2-C. Got it pretty well cleaned up. The front panel is important to me, and it is probably an 8.5 out of 10. Not perfect, but pretty good. I didn’t use anything harsh on it. Knobs are good. The top of the chassis has pitting that is due to the copper plated steel material (at least the corrosion looks like rust). Everything I read or watched online said you can’t fix it without removing the copper plating. Best you can do is clean it, and if you want, put a clear coating of some type over it to help stop further degradation. I’m undecided about that at the moment. It is fine on the underneath side. Interesting that some metal connectors and hardware, have a thin yellowish layer of corrosion, or some buildup. It cleans off fairly easily. I wonder if it is related to the copper plating somehow. I have powered it on carefully, and no critical issues seen. The biggest problem I found was that the AF gain pot did nothing until it wa...

My Drake 2-C has only 5 tubes, and I don’t have a tube tester. So I thought I would get a set of spare tubes. I recalled seeing a vendor at the AWA Swapmeet selling tubes and said he was local, and he gave me his card, which I soon misplaced (it’s around here somewhere). So I checked a couple places online, but thought why not find the local guy? A Google search located him. Jerry, KB2QIU. I sent him an email and he quickly got back to me. He had the tubes, and his prices even saved me some money from the online shops. We made arrangements, and I picked them up today. If you are looking for a tube, you can find him at email: elixir17@aol.com