In todays video we see if we can bring this crusty old Yaesu FR-101 back to life. Support us on Patreon; / theradioshop Contact Information; gokarters.com/smf/index.php?to... Discuss this on my website; www.gokarters.com/smf
Now that's a receiver I would like to get my hands on and also the matching transmitter but I think I have enough boat anchors for now. Great video as usual and I love the old 30 pound rigs. Thanks Buddy
I'll bet you those VHF boards went on Ebay at some point in unknown condition since the receiver wasn't working and probably sold for a good bit of cash. That was a pretty high end receiver back in around 1976 or so selling for $800 that being around $3500 in todays dollarettes. Always good to see another blast from the past in The Radio Shop. 73 Doug.
Buddy, thank you for this nice ts! Love to the that old receiver making some good noise again. As i have some old DMM with dimm vac display, i am looking forward to some work on the brightness...maybe you are lucky with that. 73 and all the best from Cologne, Germany. Olaf
Thanks Olaf, Glad you found interest in the repair. I really be interesting to find the faults in the VFD tubes. Thank you for stopping by my friend. 73 and the best to you also.
As always Buddy a very informative video and I have now taken one piece of advice that you toss out, and that is start by checking to see what parts of the radio are actually working and which ones are not. I was about to send a radio off last week that had an intermittent receive issue but I kept at it following your steps and found out that I had a dirty tube socket that making a tube shutoff when it warmed up. I used some Deoxit one the sockets and it now works great. Kevin - KG0MN
As you saw in the video by using this method the problem showed itself, and very quickly. You guys were seeing it as I saw it. Always works for me. Glad you saved yourself some dollars be fixing the bad tube socket. That is using your common since. Thanks for the comment.
Great video. I got the twin set here Fr-101 and FL-101 would like to get them working. Time to get in do some testing I got the manuals and schematics. Ham friend wanted to dump it. Hope I can save it.
You'll see boards removed a lot from eBay units, especially from a few vendors that mark everything as "has problems." They're bad to rob these boards to resell, and sell the transceiver as not working, or has problems.
A broken little cap and that kept rf from coming through. Sometimes a good pair of eyes comes in handy doesn't it Buddy. It is really hard to believe a unit that looks pretty clean initially can be corroded. Great bunch of troubleshooting step by step Buddy.
Another Frog brought back to life. I would remove that preamp to. Most of those things have no filtering and amplify the noise floor as much as the signal you want. Look forward to the next part.
Agreed with that Mike. As seen the noise floor was between s6 s7. Most which is probably the preamp causing it. I will say it was no surprise how easy it was to get going. Very simple design.
Hi Buddy, Nice diagnosing. Shame the two modules are missing. I agree removing the preamp board would be best. Looking forward to the video on the display module. 73 WB3BJU
Good to see the old girl has got some life in her. Have you ever messed with a Bearcat DX 1000 lol i know you probably never heard of it? Thanks for the video
Love the restoration videos! Did the owner mention where he got this from? Ebay or ?? Just curious and look forward to more! Especially if you can balance out that display
He picked it up at a ham fest a few months back. Did not give a lot for it either. Will be interesting on what we can do to get the original tubes back bright. Thanks for the comment.
I would yank out that pre-amp. willing to bet the "tech" put that in to "fix" the decreased receive that came from the broken cap you found , and was that problem from the start. The active antenna........ probably came from a mag article and he decided to try it out. Looks like great radio and worth putting time in to restore.
Nice job Buddy, Been looking for an inexpensive SW receiver and will check the next flea for one of these. Have a question. The red colored lettering on the front looks more like splashed paint than actual lettering. Then I checked on line and most of them seem to look like that. Is this a common issue with these? Or is this a trick of the camera.
I think these are great receivers. I always wanted one myself. It is funny you mentioned that about the red letters. They seem to be camera proof lol. They are nice and sharp to the eye but go nuts when the camera tries to focus on them. I too noticed that they look like that online. In part two I will use a filter so you can see the letters in better detail. Thanks for stopping in my friend.
Gday mate I recently acquired one of these. Literally brand new. Left in the plastic since 1975, insane. I was just wondering how much I could get for it and how sought after they are? Thankyou sir
Thank you for your video, very helpful. I too am restoring an older FR-101S. Dont know if there is a difference between FR-101 and FR-101S? I had a FR-101D 30 something years ago and regret parting with it. Can you tell me about the regulater.BFO board, the board in my FR-101S is labeled "PB-1312A" but the schematic calls it "PB-1549" ?? Anyways there is no voltage on pins 14 & 17 on the rail. Cheers...VE7QRP
thanks for showing us buddy. I thought it was in the section you found it, but didn't know it would be the connection from the previous stage. that would stop things quickly. I hope you find resistors to boost the weak digital readout tubes. that would make the radio look new. I doubt you will find those two boards though. I bet when the radio went deaf, the guy just pulled those two boards, and didn't think about the fm board
Thanks Paublus. I was pretty sure it was going the be the oscillator or vfo circuit. You guys got to see it as I was seeing in. Good call my friend. When I saw the cap hanging loose I knew the mystery was solved. We still have a lot of work on it.
hi there,do you have a tip on howto calibrate the s-meter ? it sticks to zero on 40m band and does not go over 9 when listening to powerful bc stations... thnx and 73s de I-VE611
I think it's very unlikely you will get those vfds to perform better, had the same problem with a hp dmm, luckily I managed to get a new display from China fairly cheaply, so good luck finding some new old stock maybe!
Good Morning Buddy.... I am assuming they don't make these 2 meter and 6 meter boards anymore , I currently have one of these receiver but not sure weather or not it has the boards already.... Nice Video Buddy