Yaesu FT 480r overhauled

Yaesu FT480r FM/SSB 2 meter multimode transceiver

My first ever amateur radio transceiver was this Yaesu FT480r bought from the Plymouth Amateur Radio Society radio rally in about 2005 with a dual band mobile antenna and mag mount, I still have and use all three!

Well a few age related issues were making themselves felt so the radio was sent away for servicing in about 2009 but she just seemed to be running out of steam again of late! So the time had come during 2018 to send her off to James M1APC in Cornwall for overhaul and repair and she now seems to be as good as new!

Remedial work included:

Full strip down and Recap of the entire radio inc PA stage

Full realignment

James description follows below

"Yaesu FT-480R sent into The Shack for a full going over. Initially the radio was off frequency by 40kc's. The audio on transmit as well as receive was dull and TX power was lower than it should have been. on further inspection I found a couple of corroded legs on the caps. otherwise general functions seemed to be ok. With the leaking caps in mind I spoke to the owner and suggested a full recap and realignment which he agreed to go ahead with as he really wanted to keep this radio going. I started by stripping the radio down to separate PCB level. Now this may seem a bit overkill but experience tells me that the wires in this set are old and therefore brittle, easily broken. Freeing off the PCB's removes this factor and allows me to get access to all the old caps. Once the caps had been replaced I put the radio back together. Once it was powered up it didn't work.. The VCO/PLL stage was not locking properly. A gentle movement on the PLL board the radio came to life.. Dry joints brought on with moving the PCB about was the cause. A small amount of rework was done which cured that issue. This proves how delicate these old sets are. Moving on the realignment was done and the radio is working fine and sounding great.

Sorted!"