When Was the Last Time You Repaired Your Own Tranceiver?

This was today's poll question on the ARRL website - When was the last time you repaired your own transceiver? I find this to be a really interesting question. When you consider the types of radios we have these days - all micro circuitry and transistor based - for the average person there really isn't much we can easily fix. However, I am surprised by the results this far in to the survey - only 29.6% of voters (as of 1630utc on Friday) have NEVER fixed their own transceiver in the last 10 years!

That is a rather surprising statistic. That means 70.4% have, through the many categories they have all the way up to the last 6 months time period. That is great though - that means that there are a lot more non-appliance hams out there than I thought. Though, there is no category for the type of fix. Say, if a pre-amp blows up - I don't think 70% of the hams out there would be able to fix it. Likewise, if they have an IF that quits on them.

The last fix I did to a radio was I fixed the VHF/UHF SO-239 on my FT-857D a couple months ago. The pin was not held in the socket well enough and it attached itself to the PL-259 on my dual band antenna in my truck, which broke the connection inside the rig every time I pulled the radio out. So I used some JB weld and glued the pin in place. I have yet to have a problem with it since.

One fix I am still working on, mainly because I haven't tracked down a new part for, is the RF suppression choke on my TS-2000's keying circuit. It isolates the CW keys from ground. The choke blew and my CW keys wouldn't work - no connection to ground. So I hot-wired the keys to ground manually and the radio works (I've been using it for the past several months this way), but I really do need to get the choke replaced. One problem with the choke is it is buried in the deepest depths of the radio's circuitry.