My good friend Ernie KG4YNI once asked if I knew the
difference between a Northern and Southern Fairy Tale. I didn’t so he went on
to explain. A Northern Fairy Tale starts with “Once upon a time,” but a
Southern Fairy Tale begins with “You ani’t never going to believe this.” Well,
I have a Southern Fairy Tale with a good ending.
Recently I became concerned about the power my icom 7000 was
putting out. Not wanting to believe the power meter on the radio, which clearly
did not register full power even though the radio was set to deliver it, I
asked Rich if he could help. He brought his Bird watt-meter to my shack, and
sure enough, I was getting only 50 watts out when my rig was set for 100 watts
on HF, and 25 watts when set for 50 on VHF. Later the next evening, he
suggested that I might find the answer by searching Google, which I did. Most
of the hits I got were useless or irrelevant, and then I stumbled across an
article by AB4OJ suggesting that corrosion on the inline fuses from the power
supply to the radio was the culprit. I pulled my fuses, and discovered the same
black lines of corrosion that AB4OJ found. See photo below of my fuses before
and after cleaning with emery paper.
Bottom line, after cleaning the fuses, I am now able to get
a full 100 watts out of my radio. I know what you are thinking. You ain’t going
to believe this, but it is true, and something to keep in mind.
KI4ZMVBill
PS If anyone would like to contribute to the blog with information that you feel we could profit from, please feel free to submit what you have, and I will publish it.
