FT-100 VFO Rotary Encoder replacement

For those of you that are regulars you will all know about the problems i have had in my mobile station over the last fortnight and for anyone who is here at ham radio for the first time,hello and welcome to my web blog.

After operating all week from the mobile on the recently fitted ft-857 I was now missing my old friend the ft-100 which was suffering with a locked up solid vfo with no easy way to tune up or down. So I struggled all week on the ft-857 that seems to not be able to blank out the rfi from the engine too well but still made a couple of QSOs on 20m, 40m, and 2m asking for a audio reports.

The Conclusion
FT-857 vs FT-100
The Old ft-100 in this case is better than the new ft-857 on Receive, Audio quality,and overall performance on HF and FM.
As for the ft-857, is easy to use and looks good but that's about it, as soon as the FT-100 gets back in its right full place the better.

Well, Karl G1YPQ got it right when in qso he was telling me that I did not sound as clear as usual despite trying numerous settings. "You would have thought that they would have taken the good bits that worked so well on the ft-100, and put them together with new improved technology then put it all in the box of a new ft-857 to produced an even better rig. But instead it seems that something did not quite go as planned, as the old rig seems to out perform the new one".
I agree with Karl and that's why I got on the telephone and spoke to some very helpful people at YAESU UK Limited, and was able to order a replacement rotary encoder (vfo) for the ft-100 at a total cost of £18.49. The service from yaesu uk was fantastic, friendly and knowledgeable and I ordered the part early Friday morning receiving it early Saturday morning, that's very fast for U.K. I was highly delighted to be on my way back to operating the ft-100 from the mobile as soon as the vfo transplant was completed. I decided to take some pictures to show how simple the task really was and the total time that the job took was less than 15 minuets.

Rotary Encoder courtesy of Yaesu UK limited cost £18.49. next day delivery.

Pull all the knobs off by hand, use a small allen key to unlock vfo nob after the rubber grip has been removed.

Remove the two screws from the rear panel of the head unit. Gently prize the the back panel open and separate.

Flip up the plastic clip that the tape power lead is plugged in, allowing it to be gently removed and separated.

Unscrew the brass locking nuts on the front panel nobs and vfo.

The radio head mother board will now detach and allow access to the board.

The damaged vfo rotary encoder is in view and still connected. Unclip the white connecting plug to detach.

The new vfo rotary encoder connected with the old damaged one removed

All parts can be re-assembled by carrying out the above in reverse, and more important,all fully functioning again ready for me to try wear it out again.

So a happy ending for the favorite rig of mine, I shall be fitting it back in the Toyota tomorrow curing all rfi and noise problems with the radios superior noise blanker, putting the ft-857 back in the home shack where it gets used for satellite tracking and to be fair it does an excellent job.
All ends well in this scenario and as a result of changing things around i decided to swap the QTH shack around some more, so I can work on the HF bands on my other older rig the ft-767gx with the MD-1, giving the ft-847 a break for a while from HF but trying it on vhf instead. I guess i shall be mentioning any noticeable results in the near future, but until the next post its 73 and all the best from Simon 2E0HTS Baildon Moor, Yorkshire, in the North of England.