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| Time to repair the control box. |
It seems that almost all the bugs have been ironed out with the
MFJ 1788 loop antenna. I sure have had an adventure with the unit but things seem to be on the upswing now. Some of the indicators the MFJ loop gives you when your match is good are High noise level meaning you are in the ball park. The SWR meters on the control box that visually tell you the SWR is good. Finally there is a tone that comes from within the control box when you are auto tuning the loop. As far as I am concerned this tone is only within the range of our cat Oliver's hearing. UNTIL........one day when I was tuning the loop in auto mode and all was going well until Julie tapped me on the headphones saying "can you not hear that ANNOYING sound!! I took my headphones off and still nothing it was not until I put my ear right up to the MFJ control box could I hear the tone. WOW my hearing must be way off as Julie said it was very noticeable to her in the living room and to add insult to injury she also heard it over the TV. Needless to say this event happened a few more times and
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| Ready to remove switch |
it seemed apparent that it was time to cut the wires to this speaker. While I was in there I also had to replace a switch that controls the range of the watt meter on the MFJ control head. The original switch did not work very well at all and MFJ was kind enough to send me 3 extra ones. Cutting the wires to the speaker (I could never hear) was very fast and easy but for this switch to be changed most of the unit would have to be taken apart it seemed. Once I was ready to remove the old switch and replace it with the new one it was very easy........having said "easy" it means that with the right tools it was easy. I used the
Hakko 808 de-soldering gun and believe me this unit makes very easy work of removing the old solder. To the point were the defective switch just falls out of the board. In the past I have used the hand held de-soldering pumps and the wicks as well but nothing works as well as this unit. The solder station I have is the
Weller WES 51 and it has served me well for many years and you can change out the tips for various jobs you want to do. So with the wires cut to the speaker and the new switch installed it's now time to just operate and no more (I hope) fooling around with the antenna.
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| A great tool to have |
Final repairs on MFJ loop
3 March 2014 | by 
HamRadioAuctions
Reliance Antennas
Enigma Shop
R&L Electronics
antennas.us
Ears to Our World
“So with the wires cut to the speaker and the new switch installed it’s now time to just operate and no more (I hope) fooling around with the antenna. ”
Yes, just operate and no more fooling around with MFJ products. Why oh why can’t MFJ get their quality control under control? Sigh.
Anyway, I’m glad to hear that your MFJ product is finally working. 73’s David
Good morning David, yes it’s nice to get past this road block and now it’s time to move on.
Mike
Had mine about 7years, same short circuit battery box shorting on P.c. And the tone unit I have never heard even with digital hearing aids. Loose contact dry joint on one switch. Must be same guy on the assembly line,HI. But I will say when it works it really does a swell job. Any quieries from the neighbours I tell em it is for my parrot to sit on
Good evening Alan, good to know that you can’t hear the tone either! it’s good to know you have had yours for 7 years…..as for the parrot story I guess we would have to get a parrot before we tried the story.
Thanks for taking the time to read the post and also post a comment.
Mike