Yaesu FT-900 VCO Repairs

 This is a Yaesu FT-900 with a VCO problem I repaired for a friend. Beautiful rigs, lots of goodies crammed in a mid-sized package. This radio intermittently stopped working on some bands. 

For coverage of all bands from 100khz (receive) through 30mhz, and transceive from 160 meters through 10 meters, it uses 4 voltage controlled oscillators. This method allows better broadband performance and is switched by the processor via diode matrix. 

After a little digging, I discovered the coils are made of steel, soldered into copper through-hole pcb. They had developed a poor connection (dissimilar metals). Removal, scraping, tinning, and resoldering corrected the issue. A little alignment and reassembly, and she was up and running. Here's some video and pics...

GRC 615-B Restored

 This is an old GRC 615-B SWR bridge / low power hf wattmeter by General Radiotelephone Company that I restored and calibrated for a friend. If you dig around on eBay, you'll find some cool stuff by them. I have a noise bridge from GRC, they even made a multiband HF rig. Anyway, here's a few pics of this sweet piece...