I believe VR1 is the S meter adjustment in these radios if that is working ok I don't guess that cap is a problem it would be interesting to see what the result of unsoldering one end and see if that has any effect I'm going mostly on memory on these I have worked on many of this chassis and I know what D10 is but can't remember more than it is in the S meter circuit.Meter works perfect.
I'm in the same camp with you on that observation at least that would be all that I could see being accomplished in that position. I don't know about you Andy but my problem always stems from not knowing if the person that did this actually understands what effect it would have or was is just a hale mary kinda thing.What is the value?
Thinking it's a replacement for C33 - or a method to add more "smoothing" to the S-meter / AGC stuff.