I had one from new when they first arrived as a replacement for 706. Never had a problems with it still running fine. As mentioned before I only use about %50 power.
Whenever magical smoke is mentioned, I just have to watch the video. Another gut one, Peter. I thought only Yaesu were the ones to use not enough heat sync paste. 125 watts is too high. Cheers & 73 from W Rusty Lane K9POW in eastern Tennessee
Hi Peter I had this problem several years ago and cured it by replacing the whole driver board. It was cheaper from ICOM than the cost of a new FET! Its a real shame they don't sell them anymore. I noticed on my new board a resistor AND an inductor had been placed in series in the gate circuit...perhaps to prevent the driver from self oscillation at VHF/UHF. Mine didn't have heat transfer paste either. Nice work Peter, thanks for sharing. Steve G4EDG
Excellent videos. Thank you. BTW, there are high-performance heat-sink compounds used for computers CPUs which may lessen the temp by perhaps 2C. I am also surprised that the heat sinks/and spreader did not have a better surface finish.
You tech guys probably are already aware of this but when a board becomes carbonised great care must be takes because the carbon left behind does conduct electricity, the once insulating vero board then becomes a conductor between tracks and components. All carbon usually needs to be removed.
Hi Peter, another great job. Thanks for sharing. Especially soldering the MOSFET on this heatsink, I think it is nearly impossible with standard soldering equipment.(about 30 W iron). A few words about the "power modification"... I know the owner of this IC-7000(he is a member of our chapter) and he noticed the excessive outputpower from the beginning(misalignment from Icom, he bought this TRX new and he definetely didn´t cranked it up) , he always used this TRX at 80% of the maximum power or less. So I´m of the opinion, that the failure is caused in the missing thermal paste, missing heatsinks of the predrivers and thereby caused selfoscillations.
Great work again Peter. I envy your attention to detail as always. I guess you're not cheap, but worth every penny. Your customers should know they get the best work humanly possible... IC-7000 is such a small and tight packed radio with a lot of power. Even with a little mismatched antenna there will be a lot of heat generated everywhere, things like this are bound to happen sooner or later.
We always try the best we can as personally we see a good service as contribution to environmental protection. We need to avoid to much electronic waste which will kill our planet!! Thanks for stepping in Bora
Good job again on the repair. Icom should have this set so it will not do over 100 watts top. Guess you can say it is a flaw between manufacture and user lol. If I run into one of these I think I will copy that board to have some made. Thanks for sharing Peter.
LOL yeah that's it :-) Thanks for stepping in my friend. Ah by the way Buddy if you ever deicide to reproduce the PCB I would buy some from you!! Have a nice Sunday 73
Great job Peter as always! It's hard to explain to people that you almost will not see the effect on the S meter at the other end of pushing the radio so hard. You want another S point? you're going to need 4x the power!
Good work, and a great little idea to install the sheet metal fingers on the predriver section. It´s a shame and rediculous that ICOM does such a bad job. And by the way: Today everybody can order HQ PCB from China within a few days, so ICOM can do. And no, there a no such things like "storage costs" in such small ammounts to keep it in stock. They can make a few bucks and have satisfied customers. And no, they would not sell less new radios. You saved this operators day, Peter. And that is fine! 73 de Olaf
As a manufacturer, It is amazing the cost for the service department to get with the engineering department to approve the drawings (correct rev. ..etc) then give them to the purchasing department to contact the vendor for a small order qty so he can find an approved vendor willing to do a small qty. Oops then I have to receive it and setup a "slow moving" stock location for them. Now the following year finance will tell you to get rid of slow moving so you have to justify it every financial audit. Ah almost forgot I need to have LCM for the part so need an engineer to go into the LCM and MRP system and set it up correctly so the receiver knows where to put it. For a prototype part it is much simpler but when you have to put it into inventory all of the boxes need checked or you won't be able to find the part when needed. There are good reasons for the Peters of the world that can simply make it happen for a price.
I love your videos , I have learned so much and you explain everything very well. I attempt my own repairs using simple tools mainly a multimeter and my eyes and nose..... and can usually get things working again 95% of the time. You are a super tech...... thanks for all your efforts to bring your videos and know how to the world....... happy new year.
Good News USA - the newest Icom IC504 Driver Board is available from ICOM for nominal cost. I haven't had a need yet but ya never know so I ordered a few. Beats the heck out of trying to be a hero by rebuilding a burnt board IMHO. Plus ... you get the latest design changes.
Good thing I ordered some IC504 Driver Boards! Just replaced my first one on a recently acquired 7000. Was so bad the connector pins at J102 were gone. Scorched the bottom side of the PA Board too. Cleaned that area and apparently no component damage even though area charred. And, yes, no thermal paste. Shame on Icom. I could rant further about how the five four-fingered connectors stick through the PA board & solely rely on solder for the connection? Horrible design. @@TRXLab
Another informative video Peter. It would almost seem to be good preventative maintenance for all IC-7000 owners to check their driver board for thermal paste.
Yea you are right Michael I only can advice to check the own radio in order to avoid this fault. But it is not only the thermal paste it is rather more the additional resistor on the driver board and the additional heat sinks on the pre driver. Thanks for stepping in
You can always get the board reprinted from elsewhere theres places that will make boards to spec. I got a new dcdc board for my Kenwood Ts850s and upgraded components.
Hello, your videos are amazing, very educational and of good technical quality. The best RU-vid channel ever !! If I can get a wish; It would be nice to have videos about basic troubleshooting techniques. Eg. how to troubleshoot an RF unit, a low pass filter, a PA unit and so on. And, not everyone has as great equipment as you, maybe a little bit of simple troubleshooting with a little simpler equipment than you have. Just a tip. Keep on !!
Thanks for the kind words. Well I got your point but I'm so short of time that any additional variant is hardly to handle . May be sometime when I'm retired lol
Can't believe turning the power up. You just don't get much more performance from 25 more watts. Definitely expensive to do. They should have put the heat sink compound on it but maybe added a thermistor for auto shut down on that driver and the finals.
compromising such an amazing piece of technology for pushing 25 watts more out of the radio. tss tss tss i really like to learn, thank you trxbench, even if its a same fault i love to see how you fix it
Peter you will get the name of "Mr Icom" , before I moved over to Kenwood I used Icom I'm saddened they are not supporting the older radio's with important parts like driver boards, I'm also surprised that a 3rd party board maker hasn't filled the need for making obsolete boards, anyway I had a good feeling once it came to your workshop, it would leave a happy radio, I hope the customer asked you to de-tweak it back to 90 watts. all the best 73 Paul de M0BSW
I have been watching your videos of late. Its facinating and educational to watch you work. I sat my full licence exam last week and one of the questions was why running an amplifier at 100% is a bad idea. I guess the examiners thought that asking why running an amplifier at 125% would be to stupid a question to ask! Its seems that if you need to do this you must be desperate to make a contact and if thats the case you cant really be enjoying using the radio or care much about it. I havent bought myself a radio yet I wanted to do all the exams first. Your videos are showing me that a radio needs to be treated with respect and consideration. Regards Kevin.
hello Peter, great repair,you saved the operator a lot of money on this repair.....some techs won't even touch this repair....to time consuming.again nice explanation too. so that us hams understand what is going on in this radio when they (hams) crank it up all the way....i like the videos and i subscribe all of them......again thank you for sharing..........N1inv
I been using it at 100%. i have the same radio. Tonight no matter what I will put it at 80%. You are so correct, it's so much stress on this small radio. Thank you for letting me not blow my radio that i just got.
Dear TRX Seeing that you are working on many many HF TX radios.. What In your opinion having seen many over the years would be one of your favourite HF radios from an engineering perspective..? Even if it’s an older radio… 73 Mark
Maybe the lack of thermal paste on that driver mosfet was because Icom had taken it apart when it was first sent in and they cleaned off the factory paste?? You would think some residue would still be there, however, like down in the screw holes. I did not see any residue there. I thought Icom was good brand but maybe not so good afterall?
Hi Herbert, no I'm sure they never took off the main board since they were aware on 2 facts. first they know the driver board issue and second the don't have driver boards any longer...
Peter it doesn't say much from ICOM they are not interested in repairing radios want people always to buy new well Peter you keeping well and safe from COVID-19, as you say people want to drain the last watt out off the radio and therefore put much power strain on components and end up burning mosfits again. keep well your friend :)
came across your channel i noticed a few radios you have fixed the power has been set 100% and above. if you run it a 75% is there a diference in signal if you run 100%. i dont think there will be any improvment I run at 30 % into an amplifier and my max power is 400 watts. i never get anything warm. only my log book is hot. like to see some clips on rm italy style ampfliers sd1446 transistor replacements. keep up the excelent work peter 73
Hey Fabian...great job as usual! Hope I never have problems with mine. Run mine at 50% to keep it a long time. If I ever do have a problem I’ll be paying you to fix it instead of anyone else. Thanks!!! BTW, this radio is really great for swling and vhf/uhf monitoring too..
It's really sad that Icom won't support a radio that's 10 years old (ish, released in 2006 according to eham.net). I really like Icom's radios but things like this make me think twice. Hard to repair and not supported within 5ish years (sold until around 2014). I think hams expect to get 10+ years out of properly cared for rigs and if they don't last they at least expect to be able to get them repaired and parts from the factory.
Hi Peter so disappointing about ICom, another success and no magic smoke Peter with the cooling fan not help to keep the radio cool would take the fan on to keep radio cool even when switched on as you say Chassis acts as a cooler but the owner would need to keep the power down to protect the mosfet and 80% is a good figure saves stress on other components well done as usual it is a joy to watch an electronic engineer at work as there is something to learn :)
Couple of observations. NOT CRITICISMS! One, the heat sink thing between the MOSFET and the heatsink itself looked like a stamped out part. Is the Source of the mosfet soldered to that thermal link? Those stamped parts are typically anything but flat, unless someone has taken the time to lap them on a surface plate, or even a piece of tempered glass. You couldn't make a worse thermal interface if you tried. Now maybe it's just the camera and / or lighting, but it didn't look good. Secondly, that is not a complicated board. I think anyone with even a little bit of skill and experience laying out circuit boards could use something like Express PCB and end up with a suitable replacement. It's not rocket surgery. Get 10 made, keep 2 for oneself, and sell the others on Ebay or something. High power rf is what I do for a living BTW. We're about 2 or 3 generations beyond the BLF-278 now using LDMOS parts if anyone is wondering.
Something that has no parts available should probably be reduced in power to below standard to improve its longevity, for example the HR2510 and Lincoln’s I do, I always drop those down to 7.5W instead of 10 to reduce the chance of blowing the obsolete final!
Hi Peter Great video thanks for posting your knowledge, i have a question for you, does the replacement mosfet need special handling precautions? ie baking or anti static conditions. Thanks
If you like that piece of garbage, I have one - only max 3h of TX work (like new). but one drawback - driver module needs to be replaced (I switched of the antenna and plugged it into the TRX socket without switching of the Tuner LD700, so the driver transistor got damaged). Anyway, to me this radio is piece of crap sold for a crazy amount of money giving the user nothing which could make him/her happy. I will never move back to Icom - I bought TS440 which is great rig and working QRP on FT817 which is best of all these 3 radios.
Most Japanese companies now are saying buy new instead of conducting even simple repairs. Something like how Apple has been doing for many years. But Japanese companies are now copying that process.
Hi Peter, I own two IC-7000 radios which is how i came to view your channel. I'm always looking for ways to make my radios last longer. Fantastic video with excellent information, thank you so much for sharing. I'll be setting my output to 85% from now on. Did ICOM add the resistor to the driver board in production or was it later during repairs? If it was during production, do you know the range of serial number when they started? Thanks again and 73! Ralph KB1ZYI
Thank you Ralph! I'm glad that you liked my video! ICOM is not very much communicative if it comes to issues so they never informed about the changes they did to improve an issue. The same with the pre amp board...suddenly all the new boards had the resistor without any notification and of course no info when they started to put the mod into production for new radios.. 73
Peter the Great- If the driver board had thermal paste under it, would it be possible to see it as viewed at 4:58 in your video? I may take my 7000 apart to inspect it and look for some squeezed out excess. Thanx, awesome video as always - Bob
What do you charge to repair a radio? The same to replace a fuse or troubleshoot to a component? Charge by the hour? Do you account for what a radio is worth?
Looks to me Icom has an ethics problem! They should have a recall and make concessions to the owners. I have two of them, and have had this problem . What say you Icom?
Hi Peter, what's the mosfet (on the driver board) which is needed to be replaced? Could you specify the name of it? - is it the same for all IC7000 or they differentiate depending on the Serial Number? Where I can buy this transistor? thanks for the info in advance. As always, you're the best guy for Ham Radio stuff on YT! Schoene Weihnachten! 73!
Thanks for the excellent video. I have an IC-7000 here and wonder if I should look into the driver pcb to see if any heat transfer paste has been applied. Will reduce the power output to 90 watts or so. Thanks again
Thanks Peter for another Good video, a bit disappointing to see inside these brand name products, how they left out the thermal compound on a known overheating area of the circuit. what quality are we really getting when we pay a premium price for a brand name product ?
Great video to see its just a process like everything. Do you think they corrected these issues in the 7300. Ive always wanted the 7000 but maybe should consider 7300
Well not sure if I got you right but no watt meter can tell you what the temperature situation is inside the radio and if the heat sink can manage its job.....
@@TRXLab I tried ICOM here and they stated that the part was no longer available . I don't know how to get in touch with ICOM Europe. Maybe they would have it in stock?
Peter, I bought one of these in what the seller says “unused condition” he says he bought it, had the freq opens up and sat in his closet. Well I trust he was telling me the truth because on examination it was in like new condition. I still would like it looked at and after seeing your videos on this unit I would like all the fixes you did done to it before I install it in my pick’em up truck. How do I get in contact with you?
I've often wondered how heat sink compound actually works - it looks as if we are putting in an extra layer of thermal insulation of some kind, preventing metal to metal contact (which must be the best heat sink possible). So does anybody know what the heat sink compound is made of and how does it improve the transfer of heat away from a component?
@@fardellp The big problem is when putting two castings together like in the case of the driver module, neither surface is flat. So there are lots of tiny air voids between the metal surfaces. You only have metal to metal contact in a few high places. Thermal compound fills in those voids and fixes that with a heat conductive paste.
what you do is pipe in some propane so it jets up through the fan, then if you run it on six volts to slow the fan down, and when supply an ignition source, you can toast your weenies in style, without having to get under the hood of the pick-up to put aluminum foil on the manifold. Plus it;s real pretty at night.
Hi Des, no not necessarily it is most likely a combination on different factors. One might me high rf power thus device gets hot subsequently the pre drivers get hot too and starts oscillating....
I thought, in the 21st century it should be possible to design amplifier stages, that don´t kill themselves. That´s why i prefer my Drakes from the 20th century…..
@@tedn4yx628 that is so surprising to me... I mean that was a succes radio that had huge impact on ham community and not having parts to repair those things is ridiculous... specially seeing the price of all the used models found on ebay, they are sold almost the same price they were new...
@@tedn4yx628 releasing a new radio does not make the previous model intantly obsolete... why stopping providing parts?... it's like I wanted to get a nice little mobile radio TS50 but those things are KNOWN to have leaking capacitors and there are daughter boards that are coated in epoxy that are NOT describe in the service manual... if one of those board fail, we are screwed... that TS50 is 25 year old though... a beautiful IC7000 with a color display though is far from being an outdated device... even the 706 was a beautiful radio back then has no more parts to repair them... such a shame... I spoke with some gentlemens here about that situation and the pricing of used old radios and they were telling me that it is a lot easiyer to fix a 40-50 year old radio than a 25-15 year old radio... just like when newer suface mount technology was getting to start... these guys have fun rebuilding beautiful anchor boat radios, they work wonderfully... and when we try to get a nice 15-25 year old little radio, we are screwed if they break and they WILL break... That refrein me to buy the TS50, it was 450$ with the original AT50 tuner, beautiful but I am really affraid to lose 450$ because I can't have my radio fixed... I don't have that kind of money to waste... even worst pay 700-900$ for a 7000 or 650-800$ for a 706... wow... I can't beleive these radios are still sold at those price point... not for me...
Did you know that ANY Radio can let out the Magic Smoke? All brands and All models.It could be caused by the operator and a lot of other possibilities.I bet that’s all News to you. 😱😳🤣
Seems the Icom 7000 was a poor design that they have chosen to abandon. Poor customer service on their part. Well, there are other manufacturers out there.
Hello Peter. Is there any chance I send you my IC-7000 driver board and replacement MOSFET for you to replace the transistor? I lack the gear and skills to do it myself.I would probably cause more damage if I tryed. The board looks a repairable. Not too much charging going on. It too has the resistor in place to keep it from self-destructing. xD I haven't been on the bands for far too long since this my only HF rig. If you are able to help me out let me know how to contact you on shipment and pricing. 73s DL1FAB
@@TRXLab Hi Peter. 7 months down the road I still have that burnt driver board laying around. How is the waiting list doing? I would love to have it fixed by you and hate to buy a new radio...
"end of service"?? How about: end of our money flowing to poorly designed units? what an enraging issue. (it's good fun for us to watch however) nice work.....again.
