TS-940 Beware!

[K8WIW]

I had a beautiful TS-940/AT. Antenna tuner, filters the works. Very nice rig. Then one day while in a QSO the rig went dark. I sent it to Kenwood service center (EAST). They told me that the power supply failed and sent a hugh voltage spike through the rig frying everything. The repair was more than the rig was worth. I then found out that ARRL's insurance would have convered the repair. When I asked how this could possibly happen I was told "Well the rig is 12 years old!". MY new rig is an ICOM.

[K2SDD]

Many years ago, at least 15, I also had a problem with my TS-940. the symptoms were distorted audio. I didn't want to pack it up and ship it all the way to Kenwood thus leaving me off the air; a situation I could not tolerate. So thinking that I knew everything, I decided to seek help from local "experts," both amateur and professional. They were getting nowhere and after being off the air for several months I was so dispondent that I broke down and telephoned Kenwood Service Department. After hearing my little story the nice lady said, "You need a new power supply board. We can send you a new one for $24. When it arrives just plug it in." That's right. Just $24. I felt happy and foolish at the same time. I am sure the price has since risen but the point is that you and I need not have cursed the TS-940 when the solution was so simple. I guess I should also confess that in order to drive my linear harder I did turn the '940's power way up (tee-hee. blush! blush&#33http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif.I can't blame that on Kenwood either. The Kenwood TS-nine-THIRTY, on the other hand, well that is a different story.
73 de Mike, K2SDD
P.S. I'm just trying to cheer you up a little. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[G0IYZ]

I had a 940. The receiver used to fail. The light would come on but on one was home. I took it to the local emporium and the 'engineer' hit it hard on the top panel at the back right hand side. It burst into life!

"They sometimes do that" he said.

The repair was more than the rig. Pity 'cos it's a lovely radio.

Now own an 870 and more than happy. http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[W0LC]

On the TS-940's and some other radios, the solder through holes sometimes require a touch of the soldering iron. There was some write up on that in the past about dissimilar metal interaction in some connectors (which is a good reason to periodically clean and re-seat the connectors), as well as solder through hole eyelets not having solder all the way through the channel.

I had a problem with a TS-820 similar to that, but I managed to "fix" it via touching up the solder.

Had intermittent problems with a TS-130 and cured it via re-seating connectors.

Had a flakey problem with an IC-746 and it was the ribbon cable connector requiring re-seating.

Shipping sometimes really messes up radios due to the multitude of connectors and jumpers.

One would think however, that a TS-940 "spike" would have been stopped by a diode in the circuit.