Omni VI Erratic Receive

(posted to Ten-Tec reflector 15Nov2012)

Recently my OMNI VI+ began behaving erratically. When listening to a signal, all of a sudden it would quickly drift off frequency and then there would be no receiver output. Turning the transceiver off and then on would usually fix the problem but one day there was no received signal when I switched it on even though the digital display showed the correct frequency and turning the VFO caused the frequency to change

I suspected the 5.0-5.5 MHZ PLL was the problem so I checked the output at connector #85 of the PLL Board (81599) with my scope. The output level was very low (-5dBm instead of +17 dBm) and the output frequency was in the 9 MHZ range. I began poking around and found out that if I squeezed the tin enclosure surrounding the VCO, the output would jump to the correct freq. The tin enclosure is soldered to the PC board in two places and one of the soldering joints had come loose from the PC board. I carefully resoldered it and also added two more solder joints from the tin enclosure to the ground plane of the PC board. Problem fixed.

By the way I had called the service department of TEN TEC a gentlemen told me they did not have an exchange program for OMNI VI boards. I would have had to ship the whole transceiver to them for repair.

Markus Hansen VE7CA


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