ft817 on internal batteries - how much stamina has yours?

[bigbloke]

Hi All,

I bought a secondhand FT817 at a great price a few years ago - havent had too much time
to play with it, but my car is off the road and I'm in a hire car, and it seemed appropriate
to put the 817 in.

At first it kept popping the cigar lighter fuse, so it was onto the bench with it.

Good news is the finals are clearly ok ! but in the service menu all the power levels
had been wound up to max , poor old thing was blowing its brains out.

Ive re-calibrated them all now as per the service manual and things are much better, no
more popping fuses, even rx audio on full volume seems stable. The last real curiosity is
battery power.

I bought a pair of w4rt packs about 18 months ago and have a proper (3rd party) outboard
charger for them

when fully charged, they display 10.8V which is reasonable for a 9.6V 2.3Ah pack

On receive they last about 2-4 hours depending on the volume setting

But on transmit...from fully charged (on fm mode) into a dummy load :

2m 5W : instant switch off
2m 2.5W : Instant switch off
2m 1W : stays on
2m 400mW : stays on

same for HF, but 70cm seems to be ok on 2.5W

Sounds like the batteries are kippered ? well ive jury rigged them up to other equipment
and they cope admirably when 1.5A is drawn off them constantly lasting over an hour.

checked the rig on a commercial lab PSU and it draws below 2A even on 5W which is consistent
with the service manual

so before I embark on a major disection ...how does yours compare on internal battery power please ?

I'm not expecting miracles from my w4rt packs...just some figures to assess against

Regards

BB

[YB135]

Sorry to hi-jack, very very sorry 100% off topic, but you have a PM bigbloke that needs actioning please

Cheers (sorry again!)

[g0slq]

Am at work at present and cannot recall the exact power of the battery pack that came with it. I also bought a small 2.2A psu - it works fine with 5w as you said. I do remember however, a) on receive mine lasted longer than 2-4 hours on rx - indeed has lasted much longer listening constantly to AM (Talk Sport). And b) I never messed with the service manual or any other than general menu settings.

Not sure if that of any help I'm sure it is 9.6v but unsure of the capacity of the supplied battery pack. I recently purchased a 7A LSA battery for all day portable use.

I'll fully charge them and do the Talk Sport/5 live test again though.

[ScotchEgg]

From memory my ft817nd would run for seemingly ages on a combo of rx/tx at full power out (iirc approx 3w on battery operation), maybe a few hours. Certainly much more than minutes!

[JamesA]

Sounds a bit odd to me. I have the yaesu pack in mine and it will happily TX on 2M FM full power. Doesnt last too long, but doesnt just shut off. Just charged mine up, i'll give it a test later if the little one ever goes to sleep!

Have you tried on a real aerial rather than dummy load? Are you set to the right aerial socket? Have you tried a full reset since you reset the service menu stuff?