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JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
So my wife agreed to get her license finally and she passed her technician test last month so I had been looking for some handy talkies for her and for me. I had one already, but it is an ancient Yaesu that doesn't have CTCSS or anything so it's no good for repeaters. Plus it's just huge. I had been considering the Baofeng's but decided I'd really rather something nice, especially for my wife.

Well yesterday I got pretty lucky and found a guy locally selling 3 Yaesu VX-150's for just $55 for all three plus two wall chargers. He thought one of them was broken, but I was fine with that since I really just needed the two. Plus he was willing to meet me at my work to complete the sale. We did a radio check of the two good ones with a guy on a repeater that was about 30 miles away or so. The VX-150's get terrific reviews, so I figure for $55 for three of them with two known to work I couldn't go wrong, even if I needed to buy new batteries for them.

Well I couldn't resist figuring out what was wrong with the 3rd radio so I fiddled with it and then did some searching. Turns out the symptoms it was showing indicated it had the freeband mod done to it and that if you try to go outside of the transmit frequency range with it then it will freak out. So I took it apart and sure enough, it had the mod done to it. I cleaned it up and reversed the mod when I got home and now it seems to be working just fine, though I haven't tested transmit yet, but receive is working just fine. I listened to a emergency comms net last night with it, it picked up all but a couple of the guys who were too far away to make out through the noise. I'm pretty certain though that transmit probably works as well, so now I have three working radios for dirt cheap!

They're in pretty decent condition considering their age. The other two radios as it turns out also had mods done to them, but it was just to open up transmit for MARS/CAP. I'll be reversing those mods as well as I have no need for that. Unfortunately some pieces are missing, presumably from when the mods were done. It's just a few of the dust seals for the knobs though, however one of the radios they weren't paying attention when re-assembling it and pinched the main gasket for the body, as well as the PTT rubber. But I can get the two better radios put together with one fully complete, and the other complete except for one knob dust seal. The third radio will just be a spare and used for whatever, maybe packet.

All in all, I think I got a killer deal.

AGedHhh.jpg
 

JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
I don't know anything about the radios,but your hot sauce collection isn't bad. Tapatio is my go to every time!

You can't see them, but I also have three other kinds of Cholula as well as the green pepper bottle you can see. Regular, chipotle, and chili garlic. Plus there is a bottle of Tabasco which has been my go to recently for when we have cheap Papa John's pizza for our Monday meetings (which until the last couple weeks was EVERY week). I blame my mom for my love of hot peppers (she's a Texan).
 

JPaul

Well-Known Member
Messages
2,400
Location
Way up north, UT
Got them all cleaned up, mods reverted, and re-assembled. Those things were filthy. The batteries seem to be in pretty good shape so far. Still haven't really tested that transmit on that third radio, but I'm not terribly concerned about it.
 
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