[Yaesu] FT-90 problem

[Rick Stoneking]

All,

I recently picked up an almost never used FT-90 dual band mobil rig.  Now 
before everyone jumps in and tells me about all of the problems this model 
has a history of having - I know all about them.  But the price was good 
and I needed the smallest mobil rig I could get to put in my wife's 
vehicle, so I took a chance.  All seems to be well with one very odd 
exception.  My local repeater is 145.290 (-600).  When I programmed this in 
to the rig, the repeater was unable to break the squelch.  I had to turn 
the squelch wide open and then I could hear the repeater (which is about 3 
miles away, line of site, putting out 100W ERP from an antenna that is 100' 
in the air).  I then tried another repeater (146.625) that is about 40 
miles away.  The FT-90 heard that repeater with no problem.  Since then I 
have spent a couple of sessions trying to figure out what was going on, and 
by complete accident I found that if I set the rig on 145.285 (5kHz below 
the repeater freq) it hears the repeater perfectly fine.  I then tried 
transmitting on the standard input freq and asked if I sounded on frequency 
and I was told that I sounded "about 5kc's off".  The next step of the 
troubleshooting was trying other repeaters  at various frequencies to see 
if there was a range of freqs where there was a problem.  I have now tried 
about a dozen repeaters without seeing the same problem.  I have even tried 
145.310 (which was the closest one I could find to 145.290) and it was fine.

Sooooo... I am wondering if the problem is in the FT-90 or in the repeater 
(although why would nobody else be complaining ,and BTW I am the repeater 
guy for the club so I would know if anyone had a problem).  Could it be the 
FT-90 has a problem at a specific frequency?  Has anyone heard of anything 
like this before?  I am going to get a buddy who lives close to run some 
simplex checks to see if we can confirm and bound the problem.  Other than 
that I do not know what else to do other than send it to Yaesu.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Rick
W2RDS