[Kenwood] TS 120s IF Blow-by

[Steve Harrison]

At 08:31 AM 4/9/2007 -0500, you wrote:
>I had a TS120 and it worked fine until I went mobile with it.  During the
>trip it started pegging the swr meter on all bands regardless of antenna.
>In the motel room, I took off the case and found the boards were all plug in
>type like the computer boards used to be.  I did the short term computer
>"fix" on them.  Pull each board until you can get to the deepest one and
>then reseat them a couple of times.  Got it going again and worked fine for
>the return trip.  The connectors are not the best over the long term and
>need to be reseated of cleaned (soft eraser).

Neither the 120 nor 130 have plug-in boards. The boards are bolted to the
chassis and connected via plug-in cables. The header conns on the boards
sometimes break loose from the solder joint; I've got two 120s and a 130
that had to be resoldered. Both the 120s' audio board (the one on the top)
also had intermittent audio and regulated 5V, which was also due to the
devices either breaking loose from their solder joints on the boards or
breaking the traces at the solder joints. Those devices are bolted to the
aluminum frame that surrounds the back and outside of the board and bolts
to the front of the heatsink that contains the filter board. Had to solder
jumpers across the traces that were broken. Resoldering all the connector
pins fixed the loose and erratic connector problems.

Way back in the early years right after I bought my first 120, I had it
mobile in several vehicles then later mounted on the gas tank of my Kawaski
KZ1000A#A touring motorcycle; never had a problem with it and others have
estimated that over the years, the solder that KW used may have
deteriorated, rather than vibration causing the soldered connections to
break loose.

Methinks we're gonna see a LOT more solder problems on newer equipment now
that lead has been banned from solder. I wouldn't be surprised if even the
space shuttle and satellites suffer from that idiotic idea.

Steve, K0XP