Recent content on Wirehead.be
Some friends of mine had the worst possible nightmare. A switch that kept overheating during school holidays, and thus kids going nuts. But the strange thing, is that the controllers wouldn’t charge / be detected when connected as well. Interesting! They asked if I could take a look, and if could do something about it. The Switch itself looked really clean. I wouldn’t see why it would…
I was able to buy a switch lite for a ridiculous low price. People had apparently done a prior attempt at repairing. I knew I was in for a wild ride :-) Upon receiving, the battery was dead as a dodo, not a good sign… So I charged it up manually a bit. Immediately, I notice the connector for the interconnect was burnt… Someone swapped this USB port :-) I noticed some damage to the…
This is a neat little PC I came across. I bought it as non-booting, not turning on. Got a good deal on it, so I bought it. Has some nice specs - a Ryzen 9 6900HX. I noticed there were no shorts on the input, so no shorted MOSFET’s there. Yet no boot. I did found a voltage rail that was shorted to ground. But what’s shorted? The regulator? Or the caps? By injecting some voltage onto the…
I’ve never ventured much into TV repair, but a friend of mine who works at a tire shop uses this TV at lunch break, to play some games with colleagues. However, it started developing an issue where it suddenly would start “rebooting” by itself. He asked me if I could take a look at it, and sure enough, he brought it to me. I started verifying the usual suspects: Some capacitors…
I’ve had an Ikea Trådfri LED1836G9 fail, and I wondered what would be wrong with it. It just dropped from my Zigbee network, and re-applying power did not change anything. Would it be the LED’s? Just a simple fuse? Let’s dive in. To take these apart, just apply some gorilla-strength and pull apart the milk white dome from the body of the housing. You’re then greeted by a…
I recently acquired an Anbernic RG35XX-H to play some retro games for some old systems I own. But since my A/V setup is all nicely tucked away in a rack, so nothing is visible inside our house, I needed something to play these “on the go”. RG35XX-H
While working on my Lenovo 15ARH05 - the screen suddenly went blank, and the laptop wouldn’t boot anymore. Lucky that it failed on a Friday :) After opening it up - I started checking for any shorts. It didn’t take me long to find the culprit. Pro tip: use diode mode. It will allow you to “home in” where the short is. Give it a try. Here’s a picture of the shorted cap…
A colleague of mine asked me to take a look at his Makita work site radio. Completely dead. Not a single sign of life, not with any type of battery, and not with DC power input. Makita has put the screws in the battery compartment in a very deep hole. And it requires a security Torx TX15 (Wera has a good one Model 05138269001 with a 300mm shaft). Once that is removed, you have to use a big hex bit…
Something different to repair this time. My neighbor’s solar inverter suddenly stopped working. He already replaced it with a newer model, but would like to keep this one as a spare. So, he asked if I could take a look. The first thing that came to mind is: how do I power this inverter. I need to test the DC side of this – and it needs quite a high DC voltage. I solved this by wiring two…
Recently, Wim, ON4CGB, went to Friedrichshafen and picked up a nice-looking Kenwood TS-950SDX. The seller assured him the transceiver was in perfect working order and contained all filters. As it soon turned out, it wasn’t OK; and there were filters missing. Upon receiving signals on the main VFO, the audio sounded like the transceiver was placed under water. Apparently, a known issue with these…
One of our club members recently requested me to take a look at a Kenwood TM-241 he bought a couple of years ago, but never used it. He plans to use it just for some monitoring of a couple of frequencies for local traffic. In any case, RX is just fine, however, when clicking the PTT-button, nothing happens. No TX. These transceivers are known to be – let’s say – “difficult” when it comes to the PA…
I recently bought a Yaesu FTM-100D (I’ve been wanting to buy a decent mobile set for some time, altough I primarily work via DMR Hotspot) and have been quite impressed by it’s feature set and work-flow.
…Or not? Here’s a short post about often overlooked issues with supplying power to your mobile rigs (or any rig for what it’s worth..); Here’s the story I told to the owner of a Kenwood TM-V71…
Hi All, Just a little something I’ve run in to when setting up my new FTdx3000. I had an OmniRig setup with my previous FT-450; worked like a charm, including SDR-Console tracking, etc etc. I run everything trough OmniRig as I don’t need any virtual serial ports that way, and it works pretty fast and stable. Even WSJT-X works with it. Here’s the deal though: the supplied FTdx3000 profile for…
Recently I was asked to take a look at a IC-910h VHF/UHF all-mode transceiver which had developed an issue where the bias kept being enabled. Even on transmit and when the preamp wasn’t enabled. It luckily didn’t cause any havoc as the operator’s antenna wasn’t DC shorted at the time.. If you look at one of my previous posts – you’ll know how a basic bias circuit works (check it out here – SEA…
I recently had a look under the hood of an FT-2000; and just as I’m done repairing two FT-897; I notice that the FT-2000 should be a suspect as well! Yaesu: what gives?!
Upon opening the transceivers, I quickly saw what looked like water damage on the IF crystal filters:
I’ve always wondered why my FT-450 I bought second hand had a lower RX level on the higher bands, starting around the 20m band. I took a look at the schematic, and the input on the RX side is very classic: a DC blocking cap and protection diodes. Protection diodes, wait – those aren’t RF protection diodes; they are bog standard SMD red LED’s! What was Yaesu thinking here? (“Let’s save 2 cents?”).…
So I’ve been messing around with SMD component level repair and building for some time, but for more complex boards with things other than discrete components – a regular hot air station just doesn’t cut it. Also when working with 0402 or smaller, they just get blown away. The solution to all of this, is to get a reflow oven. The bad part? Expensive. The solution? DIY! I did some research and…
So I acquired a SEA 1612C remote ATU for cheap, but without an enclosure. I figured I’d buy my own enclosure anyway, so no big deal. As I didn’t want to use any remote cable at all, I had a little challenge: I need to give it power. Okay, that can be done via a bias-tee. The tuner isn’t made for it, but can be modified. I need some way to be able to “tune-on-demand”. I settled on a small Arduino…
I was recently gifted a SDRPlay RSP1 (thanks again ON3HVP!) and have wanted to install an RF-tap for a long time in my FT-450. Now, there’s a couple of ways you can do this: Get an extra RX antenna (duh..) Tap at the antenna port (but you’ll need to disconnect on TX) Tap at the RX circuitry Tap at the IF (in case you’re using an RTL-SDR which doesn’t handle HF too well..) In our case, we’ll tap at…
Lately I’ve been having issues where my CAT commands from Omnirig would time-out or vice-versa. (Notably the dreaded “Rig is not responding”) I had been looking high and low why or who was to blame. Factory resetting didn’t change a thing, nor did changing the serial cable. The settings in Omnirig didn’t matter – nor did serial speed. Hmm, maybe RFI is to blame? – Nope. Turns out – the issue is in…