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Galaxy Saturn Turbo voltage increases on transmit

Lkaskel

Well-Known Member
Aug 4, 2017
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300
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Hi Gang,
I have on the bench a Saturn Turbo. One obvious issue is when you key the mic the lights and display brightness increase. The voltage across the caps during receive is 24vdc (.9 high) and 26.5 on transmit. Also, at the power switch is 13.1 on receive and 16 on transmit. I've not seen a voltage increase like this before. Any thoughts?
 

Sounds as if the power supply regulator is getting ready to fail.

When it does, you could get the full unregulated 24 Volts DC into the radio and amplifier.

This tends to blow out the computer chip that runs the display and frequency control.

And other stuff.

Repairing the original power supply stopped being economical when the chinese switchmode "brick" style power supplies dropped below fifty bucks.

They can be had on fleabay for as little as half that much these days.

There are two main advantages to the outright replacement of the original power supply. The 'brick' supplies have a current limit. The radio's original voltage regulator does not. Also, there is protection from excess output voltage. The factory supply has none.

Here is just one example. There are numerous other sources.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/S-350-12-S...=item3385e21159:g:QpAAAOxytBZSQ9jj:rk:29:pf:0

If the lights flash bright one day and then remain REALLY bright, the damage will be done pretty quickly.

The labor to remove the old power transformer and wire the new one in its place is not much more than fixing the original supply. The original design is just not sufficient for the job. If you fix the factory power supply once, it will just break down again down the line.

73
 
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Sounds as if the power supply regulator is getting ready to fail.

When it does, you could get the full unregulated 24 Volts DC into the radio and amplifier.

This tends to blow out the computer chip that runs the display and frequency control.

And other stuff.

Repairing the original power supply stopped being economical when the chinese switchmode "brick" style power supplies dropped below fifty bucks.

They can be had on fleabay for as little as half that much these days.

There are two main advantages to the outright replacement of the original power supply. The 'brick' supplies have a current limit. The radio's original voltage regulator does not. Also, there is protection from excess output voltage. The factory supply has none.

Here is just one example. There are numerous other sources.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/S-350-12-S...=item3385e21159:g:QpAAAOxytBZSQ9jj:rk:29:pf:0

If the lights flash bright one day and then remain REALLY bright, the damage will be done pretty quickly.

The labor to remove the old power transformer and wire the new one in its place is not much more than fixing the original supply. The original design is just not sufficient for the job. If you fix the factory power supply once, it will just break down again down the line.

73
1st of all, thanks so much for the thoughtful reply!!! last night I watch a few videos of folks with the switch mode power supplies installed and it does seem to work. One issue I have is that I do not have a schematic for the radio and for some reason they do not seem available like many others. I do have the one for the Saturn (non-turbo) and in that radio it has 2 outputs from the PS. One is the 13.8 to the most of the radio on one is a 10 volt feed to the lights for the meters and the back lights fro the buttons. Do you know if that is the same for this radio? Is there a good wiring reference for the swapout? I have a 30 amp switch mode brick in my stock that I got from Amazon for under $20 so I could make the swap tonight :)....
 
This radio was imported by a different outfit than the folks who market the "DX" model Galaxy-brand radios. As a result, the folks in San Diego who provide service info for the"DX" radios don't list this model. They didn't import it.

The Turbo was built over a period of ten years or more. The CPU and display were revised in a big way in 1995 IIRC. The older one had a lithium coin cell visible on the rear of the CPU board. The post-1995 version does not.

The rest of the radio is similar to these two "barefoot" base radios sold by the other Galaxy.

The DX22B info is here: http://www.cbtricks.com/radios/galaxy/dx22b/index.htm

The DX2527 was made for a little longer, documented here: http://www.cbtricks.com/radios/galaxy/dx2527/index.htm

And if yours is older, you're stuck with the RCI2970 mobile manual. http://www.cbtricks.com/radios/rci/rci_2970/index.htm

Doesn't show the base station's front-panel info, but the main circuit board and amplifier are the same.

73
 
Nomad here is the web site I get a lot of radio info from that we do not have over here. some are in a French or German but you can still use them for the alignments. if you know how to do alignments in english.HE HE
just look to the left side of the screen when it loads for more radios other than the president line.

Président
 
this service manual may be the same as the radio you have.

http://78roger.free.fr/crt/manuel/service/hercule_turbo.pdf
Thank you soo much for this link!! This site is really nice to have in case of situations like this. I did upgrade the power supply to one of the switching power supplies and that did correct the issues that existed. Once I was able to test the radio on the bench I did connect it to my antenna and made some contacts. The outcome of that was a new issue. The amp board quit working. I'll open a new thread for that one.
Thanks again for everyone's council and help!!!
 
One last word about that type base station. It has a factory-installed hazard that's worth addressing.

You wouldn't hook up a barefoot radio directly to a 25-Amp power supply without a fuse in line.

But that's what this radio has in it. We adopted a policy of installing a 4-Amp fuse in the orange wire that powers the radio circuit board.

4hAhX1.jpg


This prevents a small breakdown from becoming a downhill snowball.

This is especially important for a radio with a surface-mount main circuit board.

Any radio like this that gets the cover removed for any reason gets this fuse added to it. Just cheap insurance.

73
 

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