I thought I would share some information concerning SWR meters that no longer work. Recently I was in search of a tuner, I picked up a 969 from a ham in Hickory NC for a great price. He had said the tuner had some issues none of which bothered the tuning but it did have problems. One being the Forward Power meter no longer worked.

I checked it out and believed one diode had shorted due to it reading nearly 0 ohms. I was lucky I found a kit ready on Ebay for just such problems.
The kit I thought was a little pricey at $15 bucks and again was surprised that it only required about 9 steps to install and mod the meters.

This kit works on most any MFJ SWR WATT Meter and will work with Ameritron meters also.

Well the kit came yesterday with added support from the seller.

I was pretty excited to see this kit, it came with enough parts to repair a tuner or meter two times.

Okay so now for the test, I took the cover off the 969 and just by looking this was not going to be an easy job as the instructions said. No 9 steps about this tuner by no means. Not the sellers fault by the way, he had just not tried this on a 969. To many things are connected to the PCB that it can't be easily removed. In fact for lack of better words, it would be a real pain.

I have a good background in electronic repair work. I did it for a living when I was still working years ago, but that was then this is now. So many things I have forgotten or just simply can't see to do or have the hands steady enough to work.

Okay, so I got to the repair, I decided I could do the job by going on the top side, the component side of the board. Heat the diodes legs up, pry some using a chip pry tool. Pull it and then I used a chip socket drill, that's a small finger drill that is used to clean out SMA holes in on older type PCB boards. It can still be used today when needed to clean out old soldering.

I cleaned the holes, put in 2 single hole chip socket beds, bent the new diode into shape, cut some off the legs so it mounted closer to the board.

Tested meter, working meter, it's done.

I only used one diode, I have 3 left, now that it has socket beds a repair should be as quick as removing the cover.

In most cases, the diode will blow on your meters. In some cases, the transistors will let go. But 9 out of 10 times it will be the detector Diodes.

You'll have one detector diode on Forward power and one on Reflected in most meters be it a watt or SWR or combo.

I hope this helps any new ham or older ham. IF you need the info on where to get the kit from let me know. If it's okay I will post the links here.

Maybe this will be interesting to someone if they can read my fonts!

By the way the price of this kit isn't that bad considering what you get and the help you might need. This guy is a really nice person and honest. He's very willing to help with the install if needed. I would add to, be sure to be careful when you install a diode, you can accidentally put them in backwards. Check them twice before you remove them, check them thrice when you install them.


Best Regards
GOD BLESS!

ke4cij