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Contact author:

Pedro M.J. Wyns ON7WP

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Hello dudes,

Some more fine mods from your Belgian friend .... (25 december 2007, we are currently under terrorist
attack warning, so if they blow up the nuclear facility next to my home this might be my last mod file
ever lol...)

The FT707 is a great beginners radio, in fact it was my own first HF rig paid by endlessly mowing the lawn
of my late uncle. It is often sold on Ebay for less than 200 € (300$ sorry guys your money is worth shit
these days...lol) and a very good start in ham radio. Unfortunately these radios over the years suffer from
two problems:

1. overloaded receiver

This can be easily cured by modding the RF gain system (part of another mod)

2. bad modulation (relay problem)

Lots of units I have seen always started with heavy distorted audio when pushing the microphone and
then improving after some voice peaks. The reason for this is corrosion in the relay of the balanced
modulator. (same shit relays as used in the FT102) Open the box on the under side, and lift off the plastic
cap of the relay as seen on the picture. Put a piece of paper between the contacts after being soaked in
contact cleaner spray and slide along the two contacts (open and closed, help a bit by pushing on the
lever of the relay). Replace the plastic cap. Job done... (repeat every 5 years or so...lol)

3. bad modulation (bias problem)

Most radios were delivered with a far too low bias current of the final PA stages. These 2SC2290 should
have between 500 and 800 mA bias, and they are barely into class B operation biased off factory.

Take out the PA module, open the cover and find the blue trimmer. Put an Ammeter in series with the
radio, push transmit.
Adjust the trimmer for minimum current, read the value on the meter and then increase the trimmer
until you have 500 mA more. Close the box (and now comes the hard part..) and try to fit the PA module
back into the radio without raping the small wires behind it (haven't figured out yet how to do this
properly, but I am not japanese...)

I will be back soon with the RX improvement modification....

As always, if this info was helpful to you, please drop me a line in the mail, this keeps me motivated.
Even better is sending a bottle of good wine to my home address (an Aussie ham really did this after
being able to repair his TS930 power amplifier based on my hints on this fine website...)

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You are free to forward and publish this info with all credits to the writer... Those hackers of hamradio.ro
always strip off the writer details after stealing all the files from www.mods.dk (the finest modification
website of the galaxy) and I hate this practise...