On Sun, 06 Aug 2006 15:49:07 -0400, Larry wrote:

Antenna tuner is beautifully sealed....THE DAMNED FOOL CHEAP CABLE
PIGTAIL IS NOT! Open the AT-130 tuner and make a drawing of where the
wires are SOLDERED to the board from the pigtail crap control cable going
out of the sealed case. Unsolder the wires and remove the pigtail with
the chinzy crap connector on the end and discard it. Run the control
cable from the radio through the watertight fitting and solder the wires
directly to the circuit board on the little rings you unsoldered the
other ones paying attention to where they go, of course. Ok, the outside
control cable problem is solved....

Icom makes sure you have EXACTLY the same number to hair-fine tiny pins
to put on the OTHER end of the tuner control cable that push into the
connector to plug into the radio. If you bend or break one of the tiny,
fragile, crappy pins....you're screwed. Be very careful crimping them to
the wires. Notice the pins plug into pins actually on a circuit board
through an unsealed slot in the radio case. Make sure NO STRAIN
WHATSOEVER is put on this connector...or you'll beeee sooorrrryyyyy!

The fan sucks the corrosive sea air into the case to cool the transmitter
heat sink. If any salt whatsoever is present in that air, it will simply
eat and destroy everything inside the expensive radio cabinet. The radio
MUST be mounted in a very dry, spray-free, atmosphere. Ours is behind
the nav station panel just under the cabin overhead, protected. Works
fine there. We use the remote head cable to mount the head in the nav
panel next to the matching M-602 overkill VHF radio my captain just had
to have...(c;

The NMEA connector to get GPS data into the GMDSS/DSC card in the M-802
is a BNC coax connector, one of the stupidest things about the
radio....next to the stupid control cable above. Of course, this grounds
the NMEA (-) data to the -12V power supply "ground" raising the
unbalanced condition of your archaeic NMEA network so the NMEA data RF
noise wipes out the HF receivers in the M-802 because the unbalanced NMEA
makes a great transmitter with its data pulses, especially if you run it
fast. HF works great if you shut down the NMEA gear to stop the noise
intrusion.

So why aren't we having any of those issues on my 802?