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One of those “Are you kidding me” mommets.
9 May 2020 | by Back in late April, I posted the inspection of two heat sinks my Icom 7610. I always get a bit anxious when I remove all the cable from the radio and all that is plugged into it. In the past, I have learned that it saves lots of time and headaches if I use my trusty iPhone and take pictures of the cabling. I really don't have all that many cables at the back of the radio BUT I still take pictures. Once the heat sinks checked out to be without issue it was time to re-connect the radio again along with my trusty pictures.
All was connected and it was time to fire up the radio and see what happened. Everything was good and now it was time to make sure all software was "talking" to the radio. There were no issues so far until I went into transmit. The antenna I am using is an EndFed multiband and I do need a tuner to allow a decent SWR. The odd thing was it seemed my tuner lost its memories of the presets for each band. That was no issue I just started back at square one and returned each band so it was in memory. The issue was after tuning the band I would attempt to transmit and the tuner would start tuning again as the SWR seemed to go back up over 3.0. The first thing I checked was that the antenna was still up and it was as you never know stuff happens. I double-checked the rear of the radio with my pictures and all was good there.
To me, it seemed something was up with either a coax patch cable or the coax out to the antenna. The first thing I wanted to check was the PL259 connectors on the back of the radio. I have in the past had these connectors show issues once they were moved around with being unconnected and re-connected. I try to keep coax angles very slight as I have found over time this can add stress to the connection. I was not looking forward to the whole process but it was the next step that had to be done.
I am not sure why but out of the corner of my eye I noticed my LDG DTS-4 antenna switch which I use as a radio switch (between my Icom 7610 and Elecraft KX3) and not antenna switch as I only have one antenna at the moment. The light on the DST-4 position 1 for my 7610 was out and the light for the KX3 position 4 was on! Problem solved the DTS-4 was grounding out my 7610 as it was not selected and with the simple push of a button my problem was solved.
Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].All was connected and it was time to fire up the radio and see what happened. Everything was good and now it was time to make sure all software was "talking" to the radio. There were no issues so far until I went into transmit. The antenna I am using is an EndFed multiband and I do need a tuner to allow a decent SWR. The odd thing was it seemed my tuner lost its memories of the presets for each band. That was no issue I just started back at square one and returned each band so it was in memory. The issue was after tuning the band I would attempt to transmit and the tuner would start tuning again as the SWR seemed to go back up over 3.0. The first thing I checked was that the antenna was still up and it was as you never know stuff happens. I double-checked the rear of the radio with my pictures and all was good there.
To me, it seemed something was up with either a coax patch cable or the coax out to the antenna. The first thing I wanted to check was the PL259 connectors on the back of the radio. I have in the past had these connectors show issues once they were moved around with being unconnected and re-connected. I try to keep coax angles very slight as I have found over time this can add stress to the connection. I was not looking forward to the whole process but it was the next step that had to be done.
12 Responses to “One of those “Are you kidding me” mommets.”
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Just the other day I had one of these same moments. I am glad I am not alone 🙂
I also have a 7610 and removed all cables, wattmetter and radio from bench for some bench maintenance. After finishing the task at hand, cabled everything back to my spec sheet and fired up for a test. No power out on the wattmeter. Tried everything from re-cabling, etc. to reinstalling WSJT-x. No joy. At this point it was Rainier time. After a few sips, my focus seem to increase, I notice my wattmeter was in VHF position. Flipping black switch on black paint to the HF position fixed everything. God bless Rainier and Mike you are not alone 🙂
73 Greg K7GAN
Good evening Greg thanks for taking the time to read the post and leave a comment. I would imagine you like me were just thrilled to realize it was not a major issue, even after all the time spent trouble shooting. Both for you and me it could have been worse but it was just both of us overlooking something.
Have a great what is left of the weekend,
73
Mike
VE9KK
Hi Mike, just wanted to thank you for your articles, and to say you’re not alone! From defective brand new MFJ 4 position switches to just setting switches wrong when checking HF outputs from the IC-746Pro, as opposed to forgetting to reset the switches when going back to the IC-7300. Fortunately the 7300 just said “No you don’t, and refused to transmit! Best 73 from Elliot Lake,
Bob VE3ETE
Good morning Bob and thanks for leaving a comment on the blog, I’m guessing we have all been there and done that. I am not sure as to why the 7610 was allowing me to transmit and try for a decent match. The funny thing is the tuner would get an SWR of about 2.0 but then as soon as I tried to transmit again the tune process started all over again from scratch. Not really sure what the DTS-4 switch was doing when the KX3 was selected.
My condolences to you as well Bob on the passing of your wife. It is great that your son is home as you say, take care during this time.
73,
Mike
VE9KK
Been there. Done that – more than once.
Like you, when ever I work on any on my equipment I take pictures of all of the cables and every menu screen. One set of each will last and save you many hours of reprogramming.
I’ve done that many times. Some stuff is just too complicated these days!
My most spectacular oops was with an old Drake TR-3 tube transceiver. You had to tune the finals on it before you could operate, and as I was tuning up on 10m on my 5BTV I thought it looked like the settings were different from what I remembered. But I kept following the tuning procedure until a bright blue-white arc started hissing inside the metal cage that housed the finals. I shut down and started looking for the problem. Then I remembered we’d had a thunderstorm the previous evening, and I had disconnected the antenna lead and thrown it outside.
Good afternoon Ed very nice to hear from you, I even go as far as to take screenshots of my software settings before I make any changes. As you know as you already have a 7610 (read your QRZ bio) it’s great you can save all settings before diving into the dark side of the menu changes. Thanks for stopping by Ed and have a great Sunday.
73,
Mike
VE9KK
Good Sunday afternoon Dave and thanks for sharing the “event” you had. I hope there was no damage done to the amp? I would guess it was a very robust unit unlike today as today’s amp may have been off for repairs. Thanks for stopping by Dave and take care during this time.
73,
Mike
VE9KK
Here’s my goof up story Mike! I was setting up my Yaesu FT-897D for the Feld Hell/Hellschreiber Club’s weekly 40 meter band net held each Thursday evening at 9 PM EDST=0100z during daylight savings time and at 9 PM EST=0200z during Eastern Standard Time on 7089.50 kHz(that’s 7088 on the VFO with a 1500 Hz audio signal) and have done so hundreds of times over the years and I sat here and spent over an hour trying to adjust the audio setting going from the soundcard with the computer’s speaker adjustment in the soundcard settings window in my Dell Inspiron 17R laptop that then runs through a very old West Mountain Radio Rigblaster M8 digital interface and no matter what I did I couldn’t get any drive into the radio to make it put out a signal, I tried & tried and did everything I could think of and still no luck! I got aggravated and got up and went to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and was about ready to say just forget it when I sat back down I noticed I had forgotten to plug the cable from the back of the Rigblaster into the RJ45 mic jack on the front of the FT-897D! I said to myself, “you dumb ass!” Anyway I plugged it in and everything was fine, but that’s not the end of the story Mike. A month or two later I did the same thing again! Geez Mike! I’m losing my mind over here! I just bought a new FT-991A on April 29, 2020 with the economic stimulus payment Uncle Sam sent to me so now I can do digital modes through one USB port and have done away with having to use the Rigblaster and 2 audio cables I had to use to do digital with the FT-897D because the FT-991A has it’s own soundcard built right in! Very 73 from Cliff, KU4GW, Feld Hell Club membership # 0062.
Good evening Cliff and thanks so much for sharing your “events” with radio, we have all been there and done that in one way or another. As I was reading your post I had a smile on my face knowing that in the end it was a very simple solution that was overlooked. As for the onboard sound card I have the same in my Icom 7610 and it’s just great for the digi modes and I don’t want to say that is makes it seamless as that just sets me up for a “Murphy” moment.
Thanks very much again Cliff for sharing 73 and have a great week.
Mike
VE9KK
Gracias por compartir tus experiencias a veces tenemos momentos graciosos ,creo que es por exceso de confianza de nuestros conocimientos.una muy buena cosa llevar un registro de imágenes antes de ponernos hacer las travesuras en nuestros equipos
For those of you not fluent in Spanish John HC3JP said the following below:
Thank you for sharing your experiences. Sometimes we have funny moments, I think it is due to overconfidence of our knowledge. It is a very good thing to keep a record of images before we get into mischief on our computers.
John muchas gracias por pasar y tomarse el tiempo para leer la publicación del blog. Yo también creo que es importante mantener registros e imágenes para acompañarlo. A medida que envejezco, estas cosas se vuelven muy importantes y me salvan de seguir los mismos pasos que hice en el pasado.
73,
Miguel
VE9KK
John thanks very much for stopping by and taking the time to read the blog post. I, too, believe it is important to keep records and pictures to go along with it. As I get older these things become very important and saves me from going over the same steps I did in the past.
73,
Mike
VE9KK