[1000mp] FT-1000MP back ground hiss. CW Cap Mod--LONG!

[Garry Shapiro]

>
> The IF hiss in the audio was the only disappointing thing about the MP
> when I first bought the radio.  INRAD's front end mod, along with the
> capacitor mod, reduced the hiss to where I no longer notice it and I'm
> very pleased with the radio now.
>
> 73, de Earl, K6SE
> _______________________________________________
>

I gotta tell you, Earl, that I am less pleased---several things about my MP
are really annoying.

I won't count the IF hiss, because that was brought to my attention
immediately. I participated in some A/B testing with two MP's owned by N6TV,
one with and one without the mod, concluded that the mod was worthwhile, and
installed it soon after purchasing my radio.

The most annoying thing to me now is the occasional loss of RX gain I
experience when transitioning from TX to RX. I first noticed it when using
my radio at 3B9R. It was most noticeable on CW, due to the higher number of
RX/TX/RX transitions. In every case, the next cycle restores normality, but
the problem recurs after anywhere from 10 to 100 or more cycles, more or
less. In other words, it is intermittent. It may also occur after
bandchanges. This can be pretty distracting in a tough pileup.

I sent my radio to Yaesu when it was still under warranty. Despite a
detailed description of the problem, the tech claimed not to be able to
reproduce it. Yes, it was erratic, but he said he cycled the radio
"thousands" of times, and we discussed it on the telephone several times, to
absolutely no result. He eventually replaced the logical items--relays and
related components in the front end--and sent it back, and it seemed to work
better after that--at least until after the warranty expired. Now it does it
again. Yaesu said they were unaware of this problem in any other radio, but
several participants in this reflector have piped up that they experience
the same problem.

At the time, I told Yaesu's tech that, if it recurred, I would consider to
still be a warranty repair, as they had not successfully  fixed it. Of
course, I was dreaming with that. And, with the long current turnaround,
especially for out-of-warranty repair, and the potentially huge cost, I am
unlikely ever to send the radio back to Yaesu. A few months ago, I sent a
long email to K7JA, seeking clarification of that issue, but he did not see
fit to reply. That was disappointing, since I know Chip, and, in fact, sat
next to him on an airplane coming back from Dayton in '99, I believe, and we
discussed the MP and FT1KD at length. That conversation had persuaded me to
buy my MP. His nonresponse is the second thing that ticked me off.

The third irritant was the clarifier frequency jumps. They only occur when
the clarifier knob is turned at moderate to fast rate. That problem is
apparently common and well-known, and has been recently discussed at length
here. So I tend not to use the clarifier.

The fourth irritant was optoencoder noise from the B VFO knob, which appears
in my headphones. It's not loud, and is only noticeable on a very quiet
band. It's probably due to lead placement. But the Yaesu tech could not
reproduce it, even though it is NOT intermittent, but reproducible at will.
Thank Marconi it is at very low level, and generally inaudible at my noise
levels, so I have mentally tuned it out.

Number five is key clicks. It is down the list because, for quite a while, I
was blissfully unaware that I had them. Now, of course, I know that we (MP
owners) all have clicks, and I can even pretty much tell, especially on 160,
who in the pileup is a Yaesu owner, and vice versa. It annoys me that I will
have to take the radio apart and rewire the filters to cure it, mostly
because my eyesight is failing, and working on small components has become
damned near impossible for me. But I plan to do it this summer, probably
with some help from friends.

The sixth irritant is that, occasionally, the DSP goes nuts. It seems to
occur most readily with the outer DSP knob--the noise contour---full CW. The
radio must be power-cycled to get rid of it. Ditto a motorboating lockup
that occurs occasionally when turning the MEM/VFO knob--it must not be
completely debounced. I guess that is number seven. The saving grace with 6
and 7 is that they occur infrequently.

OTOH, although my display is somewhat dim upon intitial power-up, it is not
as dramatic as some have described, and it does not bother me. I guess I am
lucky with that one.

As for the keyer, it may well screw up. I don't know, because I don't use
it. I don't use it because, as a contester, I key both from a paddle and a
computer, and, in the MP, one can only do that by paralleling the two keying
sources, and that means bypassing the keyer. (Yes, I know I can send
manually from the keyboard, but I prefer my paddle.) It would have been easy
to avoid or fix that problem by combining the two key jacks on the output
side of the keyer. But that was not done. That's number 8.

Similarly, W8JI's revelation about the noise blanker needing not only to be
OFF but full CCW to avoid distortion from strong signals nearby is just
amazing. That's number 9.

Modern transceivers are complicated, and, as an engineer for forty years and
a ham first licensed 46 years ago, I know damned well that no design is
perfect, and that s__t happens. But I also know that mistakes can be
corrected, and that Yaesu has not corrected any of these problems, despite
the graying of the radio. Worse, it has allowed them to propagate into the
Mk V. I understand the economic reasons for that, but there is no moral
justification for it. Especially the damned key clicks.

Garry, NI6T