PING Jeff RE: VX-5

Put an oscilloscope on the speaker and see for yourself. It's possible but it would need to be belching harmonics of 167.9Hz to be heard. The 300 Hz high pass filter in the receiver works quite well. The local railroad uses a 203.5 Hz tone, which I can't hear on my VX-5r. Also, it wouldn't "howl" or "ring" if it were PL feed through unless it were on the same mechanical resonance that's causing the VCO to become microphonic.

My guess(tm) is that some foam pads in strategic places will eliminate the microphonics.

That's unusual. That can't be PL feedthrough unless the audio section is drifting around in gain or phase. My brain is into paying bills tonite, so give me a little time to think about that one. They symptoms don't seem very consistent with microphonics.

Open radio. Remove membrane keyboard. Clean with alcohol and "sand" the graphite contacts. Clean the mating PCB pads. That should get rid of that problem.

Well, the VX-5r could have become jealous of the FT-60 during this time, but I doubt it. Try separating the two and see if they behave in a more civilized manner.

I've seen that will some cell phone batteries. The OEM batteries seem to last forever, while the cheap Chinese eBay clones, die in less than half the time. Of course, I can buy maybe 10 cheap batteries for one OEM from the cellular provider, so buying junk is still a win. The battery in my VX-5R is the same as it was purchased by the former owner. My guess is about 1998. It still seems as good as new but I haven't bothered to verify that with my West Mtn Radio CBA-II battery tester.

Drivel: Now programming a VX-6R for a friend. I discovered yesterday that my VX-5R cable won't fit in the VX-6R. both radios have a fairly standard 4 pin 3.5mm connector. However, The VX-6R connector has a threaded section instead of the flush plastic body. The result is the VX-6R cable will fit in the VX-5R (and others), but not the reverse. Welcome to designed obsolescence. Buy a new radio, and you have to buy a new programming cable (and software). Incidentally, the various VX-?r Commander software is much better than the stock RT Systems or Yaesu software.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I can hear the PL tone. Maybe the highpass filter isn't working? It's not loud but it's there. Hook it up to an external com speaker and it loud.

I'm going to do that when i peel it apart and clean the touchpad.

Yeah. If I crank the volume the howl goes away faster.

I'll try separating the two. But the VX-5 has nothing to be jealous of the FT-60. It's full 5 watts on 2 with the E-DC-5B cig plug.

I would almost expect that being a ham on decade 3 of his license.

Oh and more drivel. I have two batteries for the FT-60. One will charge with the E-DC-5B cig plug, one wont. However both charge to 8.3 volts in the rapid drop charger CD-29. Both are 1400mah 7.2v. Got any insight on that?

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Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

The tiny speaker inside the radio probably has no low frequency response and will greatly help reduce any PL feedthrough. However, your external speaker will probably work below 300Hz, making the buzz appear louder.

However, the real question what frequency are you hearing? My guess(tm) is very little fundamental (167.9) and plenty of harmonics.

Also, try listening to the same channel on a scanner or other radio. If all the receivers hear the buzz, it's coming from the transmitter. If only the VX-5R belches buzz, there's a problem inside.

Huh? That's backwards if it's microphonics. I like mysteries but this is more than a little odd.

Yep. It also has a built in timeout timer at 5 watts out. It gets so hot that you can't hold it in your hand after about 1 minute of transmitting.

Paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes, after the impossible, rediculous, inane, stupid, and absurd theories have been eliminates, that what remains, no matter how dumb sounding, must be the explanation. Make sure the FT-60 is in a separate room when testing the VX-5r. The jealousy theory still has merit until disproven.

Sorry, no clue. I've seen some clone batteries fail to charge in the cell phone because the vendor left out the monitoring chip from the battery pack to save a few pennies. They would charge in various "universal" cell phone chargers, but not inside the phone. There are also various anti-counterfeit battery chips being used by some vendors after litigation for alleged injuries caused by exploding cell phone batteries.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Depends if the PL tone is dirty? It may be or at too high a level? Yet you can't even hear it on the FT-60.

Yeah its detectable on a couple different scanners. And even on the internet scanners used by scanner-911-something.com Lets you listen to police on your computer or Ipod Touch.

It kid ov validates the grounding problem I first read. More vibrates seats the grounds. I will first try to dispute or prove this by following the instructions I have archived. Before I try pressure on the board.

I think the TOT is for packet mostly. Most repeaters running in normal mode allow 1 minute continuous if that. And yes the brick in the VX gets very hot. Especially on 6 meters. probably an antenna mismatch VSWR thingy.

Both Ft-60 packs are factory. And both charge normal on the rapid charger. It stumps me why only one charges using the cig plug.

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Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

Yes. If the high pass filter is doing its job, then you a pure sine wave (i.e. no harmonics) will NOT be heard in the speaker, even if it is slightly over deviated. The catch is that the de-emphasis network makes low frequency modulation rather loud while attenuating the highs with a -6dB/octave roll-off. If the PL deviation is high enough, it will hit some limit, clip, and therefore generate harmonics. Each radio has it's own limit as to how much PL over-deviation it can handle. My guess is anything up to about +/- 1.5KHz is fairly clean.

No. See previous guesswork. If the over-deviated, but clean, you should not be able to hear it through the high pass filter (unless the tone is sufficiently close to the filter edge to leak through. If you have a service monitor, you should be able to test the VX-5R receiver for how much PL it can handle before it clips and spews harmonics.

Different tolerances to over deviated PL? I don't know without running some bench tests on the radios.

Most scanners have really marginal PL high pass filters. Internet scanners are a different horror story. Some spew flat audio directly from the discriminator. The result is that this bypasses the de-emphasis network and high pass PL filter. RadioReference.com has recognized the problem and inserts de-emphasis and high pass filters on their end, but that's a band-aid. The filtering really should be done at the source. Sometimes they forget, and the audio really sounds awful and full of PL buzz. Other reflectors just resend what they receive, resulting in the same awful audio and buzz. No clue what you're hearing. I would put the feed on an audio spectrum analyzer and look at what's being received. If the audio envelope looks like it's sloping downward at about -6dB/octave, you're getting flat audio. If the PL looks like a comb line, it's being clipped somewhere.

Sounds fair. Radio diagnostics and service by remote control is far from perfected. I'm always open to alternative explanations.

Bad connection on the battery monitor contact? Sorry, but I can't think of anything better.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I'll try to clean them. The drop charger uses external contacts like the VX-5 only they are backwards :) Or i could use the same charge on bot radios. Why Vertex Standard decided to do this only could be because the ywant you to spend more money. Mother effers.

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Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

Two pins on the FT-60 battery pack. The radio must have a built in sense circuit that shuts off the charge. And that does happen because after say

8 hours using the cig plug to charge the battery is cool. However, the battery pack in question never does warm. But when charged via the rapid drop charger it not only charges and displays the same 8.3 volts when the radio is turned on but lasts as long as the other battery. Go figure that out.

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Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse