Monthly Archives: February 2015

Yaesu VX-8DR beyond mars modification

After using my radio for a while and making sure everything worked I decide to go beyond Mars (MARS\CAP). Here’s how it looks. Before I began I look up a video on a technique to de-solder small resisters. The term that came up with the video was SMD. I guess it has something to do with surface mounted electronics. It was a bit of a pain to remove this resister and I did end up adding more solder like in the video. I found the added solder conducted the heat more efficiently. I also turned up the heat fairly high. Not the highest, but maybe upwards of 78% of the total output.

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This is the resister as seen through a 16x loop

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To get to it I had to peel off the waterproof seal behind the battery. This is what it looks like to the naked eye.

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This is my setup. A lighted 5x magnifying glass sitting on top of a box.

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This is the view through the magnifying glass. This is what I saw when I desoldered the resister.

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This is the size of the resister compared to the soldering tip, and this was the fine tip attachment…

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This is the size of the resister as seen through a 5x magnifying glass after I removed it.

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This is what comes up on the radio after it’s turned back on. All the data and settings are erased. I still reset all settings after I was done, but I don’t think it was necessary.