EB5AGV's Workbench: Yaesu FT-847 restoration

Bringing back the beauty to an abused rig

FT-847

This page is devoted to the restoration of my Yaesu FT-847 transceiver.

I got it from eBay some months ago... description was not too accurate and I ended up with a damaged rig (mostly physical damage) with some parts missing. Seller refunded part of the purchase price so final price was not bad and I had some cash to buy the needed spares :-)


Unit as received

This is what I found once I opened the box...

FT-847

FT-847

FT-847

FT-847

There were cracks all around the front panel:

FT-847

FT-847

But this was the worst damage:

FT-847

FT-847

FT-847

Not all was bad!. There was an extra CW filter installed:

FT-847

But everywhere, thre were surprises... internal fuse was missing. Bad finals perhaps :-(?

FT-847

VHF and UHF power amps seemed in good shape, if a bit dusty:

FT-847

Now the front panel PCB... there was some job done to the power switch, as a trace had burned and was replaced this way:

FT-847

Fan was also pretty dirty... not unusual, as it is always running in this rig:

FT-847

Now I found more untidy jobs in the front panel PCB:

FT-847

FT-847

FT-847

And on the back panel... a nicely damaged UHF connector:

FT-847


First works

All in all, unit seemed complete and in reasonable electrical shape. So I fixed all what could be done, as lousy soldering jobs, power switch cabling and so on.

Here you have some pictures of the process.

This is the condition of the HF power amplifier and filter area before cleaning:

FT-847

FT-847

FT-847

And now, after cleaning... a little better, right :-)?

FT-847

FT-847

FT-847

OK, so now with some electrical work. First, front panel should be dismantled:

FT-847

First thing to fix was the power switch:

FT-847

This was the original work:

FT-847

Then I duplicated the switch circuit, to prevent contact burning, and replaced the bare wire with an insulated one:

FT-847

After these works, unit was fired up... and it worked!!!

FT-847


More extensive works

So unit was working fine but, physically, it was awful. I tried to get new parts from Yaesu but main one I needed, front panel, was obsolete.

I asked for help in the FT-847 Yahoogroup and got some hints: there could be some spares available at Yaesu UK!. A gentleman fron UK bought it on behalf of me and sent it to me :-)

So I had a new front panel but still not the other parts, as the power switch, some damaged rubber knobs, all missing screws and so on. I sourced them in Spain, at the Yaesu distributor, but it took several months to arrive.

Here you have the unit with the new front panel on top:

FT-847

I took out the front panel to fix the power switch:

FT-847

FT-847

And this is how the FT-847 looks with her new face:

FT-847

FT-847

It is even prettier with the power on:

FT-847

And finally, with covers:

FT-847

FT-847

This is the transceiver on my workbench:

FT-847

After this, I had some QSOs with very good audio reports. Greeat!


Things still missing

Only thing which is still missing is the metal plate which has the speaker on it. Yaesu has not spares for it.

I think I will end building that part from scratch, but need a template to build it. Any taker ;-)?

UPDATE

I was able to get a replacement cover, thanks to Yaesu UK, so rig is now again complete:

FT-847

FT-847


More to come soon... keep tuned!


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