[1000mp] sticking relay problem

[Tod Olson]

I must have hit the wrong button -- horrors, sending my call wrong -- it
really is K 0 T O.

Barry said, "..KD8TO suggested "I suspect that if we were to poll everyone
on.. "


Anyway, there is a part of me that says Barry is absolutely right --- there
certainly have been several sessions of messages on this reflector over the
years with folks stating that they have the problem and others allowing that
they have seen the problem too. But each of those times a significant number
of people who had been commenting do not comment on that problem.


The other part of me says that for every person writing something on the
reflector there are between 10 and 100 (or more) who do not write -- even
when they have a problem. If we were to add the many, many people who never
see messages from the reflector because they either do know it exists or
have not bothered to subscribe, my gut tells me that the incidence of
phenomenon must be less than 1% world wide and maybe less than 0.01%
worldwide.

(Yes, I did speculate 1% on this reflector but that was because we are the
'activists'.)

If I were a member of the 0.01% I would not be cheered one bit by the fact
that most people did not experience the problem because I would be
experiencing it 100%.

I can only hope that we collectively persist in searching for some sort of
causal agent which produces this problem. It may be making lots of QSO's ( I
am not seeing it and I know that I made more than 3000 Q's this contest
season and at least as many last season with the same radio. There are many
others who have made more than I did with their FT1000X units. It may be
that one has to have really high rates of switching. It may be that there is
one production batch that has a special problem. All we can do is try to
keep track of which units are having troubles, collect information on what
was done to fix them (are there some that cannot be fixed?) and see if we
can conclude what the cause might be and what preventive measures or direct
fix will keep us on the air.


I guess that is the whole point of the reflector. There have already been
some suggestions that are useful. (Relay tapping, a testimonial that it is
easy to replace a relay, etc.) Let me add one other thought -- so far, no
one has declared that their radio simply did not work out of the box
(obviously it would have gone back to the factory if it did not work when
received) so we can conclude that all of the radios being discussed did
operate correctly at one time. That makes it reasonable to suppose that
something changes with time and perhaps with use which causes the problem. 


Tim suggested that at one time he thought maybe there was something
happening to the relays when the radios were turned off but the antenna was
still connected. I think he was discussing charge build up on antennas
somehow going down the feed line and doing damage to the front end circuitry
or relay contacts. That one could be checked I suppose by asking the fellows
who are having (or have had) the 'problem' if the FT1000X antenna input is
grounded or totally disconnected when not is use. 

Tod, K0TO