[Kenwood] TS-830S troubles...

[Dave Reed]

Hello all!
 
I have encountered a problem with my TS-830S.  One evening a couple weeks
ago I removed the antenna and power cord from the ‘830’ as we had a thunder
storm pass thru the area.  I left a ground wire attached.  The radio was
working fine when I unplugged everything.  The next day I hooked everything
back up and turned the radio on and found what sounded like ‘slightly
attenuated’ signals.  It was the small change in sound that first caught my
attention.  I thought I had somehow turned the RF gain down slightly.  RF
gain was found in the fully clockwise position.  The ‘Attenuation’ button
was out and everything else set as it should be.  Then I noticed I had no
needle deflection at all.  I switched the ‘Heater’ switch <ON>.  The
transmitter seemed to tune properly with the proper needle movement and
meter readings.  It showed full power out to a dummy load.  I called a
friend by phone to help me check the transmit signal and he said it sounded
and looked normal.  I could hear him fine, but I had no ‘S’ meter reading,
and he’s only a few miles away.  Normally he has a 10 over ‘S9’ signal
here.  Shortly after this I was sitting there staring at my radio,
wondering
and it just up and lost virtually all signal without me touching
it.  The only signals I could hear were those that would have been punching
in a signal of about 30 to 40 over ‘S9’.  I could barely hear my friend.  I
shut it off for half an hour and came back to it and found it to still be
‘dead’.  By this time I’m thinking it may very well be heading for the shop,
so I thought, what the heck, and I lifted the left side of the radio off the
desk top about 2 inches and let it drop.  After the second drop, the
receiver popped back in—still with no ‘S’ meter reading, but with fairly
good audio signals.  After about 20 minutes, it quit again.  I then removed
the covers and pushed and poked around on the different boards and
components and found that by pressing on the IF board and/or the crystal
filter, I could cause it to ‘come to life’ and also ‘die’.  I removed the
relays and cleaned them.  I removed many of the wiring harness connectors
and used a contact cleaner on them and reconnected.  I eventually removed
the IF board and re-soldered every solder joint on the board hoping the
problem was a cold solder joint. After all that I still have the same
problem.  Most of the time I have 90% of my normal audio, but with no ‘S’
meter indication.  Lastly, I turned the calibrator on to see if I could get
any kind of meter reading.  Still nothing.  I could barely hear the
calibrator, but it was there.  Does anyone have a suggestion as to what may
have failed?
 
Thanks for any suggestions you may offer.
 
73, Dave
WA5OK