[NLRS] Fixng brown faced Mirage 2m amp?

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

I have a B1016 brown face with a bad main TR relay. How difficult is it 
to get the board away from the heat sink far enough to replace that 
relay? Looks like the brown face has to come off, then the switches and 
LEDs or the metal front panel and then about a dozen screws including 
the ones through the transistors. The the 8 gauge wires that have been 
filled with solder wicking well past the back panel have to bend to let 
the board move. I have a NOS relay, the cover is off the old relay and 
the points are burned and in the contest last weekend were slow to close 
solidly often showing a significant SWR in the driver transceiver, some 
times curing after a few seconds of transmission and sometimes not. The 
points should be burned since with RF keying they always switch hot. I 
was hard keying the amplifier but since the Des Moines hams let it go 
for $10 at an auction over a year ago, the bad relay was already known.

As I look at the problems of getting the board loose, it appears to me 
that I'd be better off to clean the contacts a little, then wedge them 
to the transmit position and solder then and go to an external hard 
keyed relay. That takes the preamp out of service but I've not been able 
to detect this grounded gate U310 has much gain or improvement in 
receiver NF or MDS. I'm thinking the external relay with larger contacts 
and perhaps a small relay to give isolation for a PGA-103+ preamp will 
make a longer lived and better performing station. Any thoughts?

73, Jerry, K0CQ