[Premium-Rx] NiCad batteries

[John Reed]

A good friend of mine recently told me his RF-590 was not acting right.  I told him I would try to fix it.  To make a long story short, after several days of substituting cards from my own RF-590 I discovered the problem. It was on the Control board which is behind the front panel.  There is a nicad battery soldered on that board, and after 20 years of doing its thing, it started leaking acid.  This acid leaked onto the board and dissolved several of the traces.  After a lot of scraping to remove the copper oxide crud, I had to solder several wires on the board to replace the dissolved traces.  The receiver is now fine.  I installed a portable phone nicad battery away from the circuit boards to handle the function of the old battery.

Here's a word to the wise:  If you have an older premium receiver, check to see if it has a nicad battery memory back up installed somewhere, and remove it.  Replace it with one away from the circuit boards and in an area where it can be easily replaced.  My next project will be to do that to my own RF-590.  I checked and it has not yet started to leak, but will at some point I'm sure.

John Reed, KA5QEP

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