Apache Labs Community Forum

Hello,
I recently purchased a 200d used. I was chatting with some friends this am on 3615 when suddenly I lost output drive and receive once unkeyed. RX2 is still alive and is protected with a sdr switch. I have reset the database and am at a fitful loss here. Still no rx on ant 1-3.

BTW hpsdr mrxps 3.4.9

Any thoughts or suggestions greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Steve k1gmm

Have you confirmed signals from the antenna are good by moving the cable from the ANT connector to the RX2 connector?

If so, and if you've reset the database with no improvement, the next step after that would be to reload the firmware. That's a bit of a Hail Mary, but stranger things have happened than corrupt firmware.

If that does not work then it's probably not the T/R relay because it's not stuck in TX either. That would imply that ALL of your antenna selection relays have failed, a very unlikely state of affairs.

It could possibly be a loose cable between the Orion board and the PA/RF board. If that cable was loose then relays and stuff would not switch on the PA/RF board. That's easy to check.

It may be worth becoming familiar with the schematics. They are posted in the schematics section of this forum.

To drop the front and rear panels so you can look inside...

Step 1: Front Panel Disassembly

This is necessary so that the bottom plate can be slid forwards and backwards for access.

a. Remove all of the fasteners from the front panel.
b. Carefully pull and wiggle on the rear body of the power switch until it detaches from the power switch button. I apologize for not having a better description of this process, but even a video would not provide information on how it feels to do this. WARNING: be careful not to snap the mounts off of the switch body. It should not be necessary to use any tools.
c. Lay the front panel aside.

Step 2: Rear Panel Disassembly

a. Remove all of the nuts and lock washers from the BNC connectors on the rear panel.
b. Remove all of the rear panel fasteners.
c. Pull the rear panel away from the radio.

There's a ribbon cable that connects the two boards.

A nice description of the full disassembly process is here. It's for the 100D but it's the same for the 200D.

Thanks for reply. The unit is being boxed and sent to Doug for service today. Checked connections and all seemed good. Low receive only when antenna is jacked in bypass. Everything else nothing. Full receive on rx2. That is still working. It was hot when failed. Even sitting there idling gets insanely warm. Draw is close to 5 amps which doesn't seem reasonable at idle. The cooling on this rig is an abomination and extremely poor design. If I keep it there will need to be some major upgrades to cooling as heat is a major killer of electronic components. I was only transmitting 30 watts, flat swr using an al80a amplifier keyed thru an arb704 buffer. My 7300 can run for days at 80% drive and stays stone cold. Again, poor design unless there was a problem from the get go. We will see.

Again, tnx for your help. Regards K1gmm

With respect to improving the cooling of the 100 and 200 series hardware, see this article here:

http://wu2o.dyndns.org/wu2o_fans.html

It's quite easy to simply use a small fan on top of the hardware. That's all it takes.