Sunday 12 December 2021

ICOM IC-7610 LOW ON POWER

"MY IC-7610 IS LOW ON POWER"

Yesterday, my friend swapped his FT-DX101D for an IC-7610 and I went over to give him an Interface Lead I'd made, to allow him to connect it to his ATU. While I was there, he noticed that the radio was down on power - and I'm not talking about that "perceived" low power on SSB! 
 

 
He was running in RTTY mode to get a constant carrier and tried transmitting at 50W. That produced around 25W. When ramped up to 75W it produced 30W and at 90W it produced around 45W. When he tried to transmit at 100W, the radio reset itself! 😮

After a couple more tests (including a Factory Reset) he rang the seller to inform him of the problem and arranged to take it back.  It was at this point that I suggested that it might be his power-supply, so he swapped over the power leads to another PSU and hey-presto, it worked! 

I only posted this because most beginners wouldn't give their power supply a second thought and would probably end up sending their radio off for repair. It's easy to overlook your PSU when experiencing problems, especially when it appears to be working normally. Oftentimes, you're not even aware that they are malfunctioning and it takes a completely new situation (like installing a new radio) to make you notice a problem that you were previously unaware of.


Anyway, my mate has ordered a new Power Supply and all is well with the world again.

#my radio is low on power
#my icom is low on power
#my ic-7610 is low on power

3 comments:

VE9KK said...

Good morning Tom, very nice troubleshooting and you saved him from sending back a perfectly good radio.
73,
Mike
VE9KK

Bob VE3MPG said...

What power supply was causing his problem?

Bob VE3MPG

MadDogMcQ said...

Hey Bob, thanks for the visit. He was using a cheap linear PSU made (I think) by Sharman.

73, Tom, M7MCQ.