Can IC-F60 Radios work but "go bad"

[LakeMan2]

This is somewhat of a silly question, and I am pretty sure I know the answer but I figured I would see what input I might be able to get.

I bought a group of older IC-F60 radios. They programed up just fine and have been using them with a repeater system for a couple of months. Recently I had issues with fringe repeater RX/TX, that I thought was repeater desense. After some testing it appears that some of the radios have weak TX at range (don't know if it is power or off freq). No noticeable issue close in, but major difference in TX (repeater RX) between units at range.

All HT units have no noticeable difference in RX (repeater TX) at range. But about half of them can barely hit the repeater when at range, while in the same spot another F60 has no problem hitting the repeater with low noise. I swapped out antenna etc, but the common factor was the specific HT. At the exact same physical location at the same point in time, a good one hit the repeater with low noise and good signal (regardless of antenna), while a bad one was hard to hear out of the repeater with a lot of noise regardless of antenna.

Obviously my first thought was that the bad HTs have drifted and just need to be adjusted/aligned. Unfortunately I don't have the cable jig for that or all the necessary equipment so I am looking into taking them to a radio shop.

My question is if it is possible for radios to go "bad" such that while they basically work, components degrade such that they can not be adjusted back into spec or alignment?

It is somewhat of a silly question because with electronics, just about anything is possible, but often either they work, or something quits and they don't work anymore. I am wondering how likely it is for these radios that performance just degrades and it can not be restored?

Note: All HTs are programed from the same icf file, and using the same channel etc..

 

[cmdrwill]

So many things, did you have them tested on a service monitor? Wrong or poor antennas.
Even tho they may all be 'programmed the same' there can be differences in the radio's calibration/alignment. Your mentioned symptoms point to off frequency, low power, and deviation, problems.

 

[LakeMan2]

I am having the worst luck I think. I am about done buying electronics from ebay. I bought a batch of 5 F60 then two separate singles. The singles I bought are the one that work well. The batch of 5 are the ones I have range problems with.

I connected them all up to a power meter and the two good ones TX at 4W on high as is (no adjustment) per spec. The 5 bad ones all TX at ~0.05W as they were. I hooked the bad ones up to the ADJ software and when I adjusted "Power (Hi)" all the way to 255 the best I could get out of them is 0.4W. I don't see any other adjustment that is related to power output. I checked loose connections in my setup, and measured the bad and good ones several times. Every time the good ones were 4W and the bad ones were <0.1W (before adjustment). Am I missing something?

I guess the PA's are shot in all 5 and I don't know that I can do anything about it. I have never had this issue before so I guess can PA's go bad and not be able to produce full power, but still work enough to transmit some?

Oh, the only other difference is that the 5 bad ones are all the 400-470 split, while the two good ones are 450-512. I am trying to TX ~ 467-468 but I don't think that should matter.

Edit: I found this quote from an old thread here:

F60's have a pretty robust little transmitter exciter- I have seen several F50/F60's with blown transmitter power amp finals (usually caused by transmitting into a bad or no antenna) that sent 0.05 watts to my service monitor. Enough to make it a block or so but not much further.

I suspect I am just hosed...anything worth trying to fix this?