[1000mp] MP Relays

[Tod Olson]

John:

Your description certainly makes it sound as though there may be some =
sort
of mechanical failure as opposed to failure with respect to the contact
conductivity. I think that might be an important bit of information. One
could speculate that there might be a single batch or only a few batches =
of
bad relays which cause the problem. If there is a single supplier, then
presumably all the relays have the same design and differences are
attributable to manufacturing variation. If there are multiple =
suppliers,
then one can expect there will be different designs which might have
mechanically different properties -- especially after some use.=20

I have been troubled by the fact that radios returned to Yaesu or to =
others
for repair are said to not exhibit the failure on the repair bench. The =
only
explanation offered for that was by Gary Ferdinand, W2CS, who wrote,

" With all the jiggling in the shipment process, it's no wonder =
Burghardt,
et. al., claim never to have seen a relay problem. The relays probably =
have
never seen so much side-to-side G forces ;-).  Kind of an "autoclean"
operation during the shipment."

I don't think the Yaesu design engineers or manufacturing engineers are =
in a
position to see some of the things written on this reflector. It =
probably
doesn't really make a difference if they did because almost certainly =
the
engineering is completed and the issue now is cost reduction and
manufacturing consistency. Getting an approved engineering change for
purchase specifications for a relay would be unreasonably expensive =
unless
there was some sort of catastrophic failure in new units off the line.

It might be nice to know exactly what the specifications of the relay =
are
and who is the supplier. One could then consider alternative relays =
(that
might have be rejected by Yaesu as too expensive). If anyone still has a
replaced relay that was returned after repair maybe that would give a =
clue.


I guess we are in the position of having to wait until one of the =
FT1000X
owners 'solves' the problem (or these problems if there is more than one
cause).

Tod, K=D8TO