I purchased a used VX-8DR off eBay. It had belonged to a silent key and his daughter was selling it. It looked to be in excellent shape and the price was right, so I bought it. It was just the radio and what came in the box, no additional accessories.
When I got it, it was indeed in excellent, almost mint, condition so I was happy with the purchase. I plugged it in to charge and when it was fully charged, I turned it on, noticing that it was a little difficult to turn on, but didn't think much of it until I went to turn it off. That was also difficult. A few days later, I couldn't turn it on at all.
After a bit of searching, I found a YouTube video about fixing the contacts on the soft buttons. It looked easy to do, so I gathered what I needed, and then took the radio apart. While most of the buttons had contacts that I could have cleaned and coated with conductive paint, the power button did not. It appears to be a mechanical switch built into the board.
I reassembled the radio and found that the mere act of taking it apart and putting it back together had, at least partially, fixed the issue. I can now turn it on and off much more easily. My concern is that eventually the problem will return, and I don't know how to fix it. Has anyone else ran into this with their VX-8DR, and are there any suggestions on how to fix it for good?
If the switch uses a rubber pad (which are conductive at 10-20K ohm), the pad and contact it touches on the circuit board are cleaned relatively easy with 91% or better isopropyl. If it's a hard plastic button that presses down on a flexible foil, you've got a bigger challenge. Typically this involves tracing the circuit and doing surgery to the board to replace the foil with a surface mount tact switch.
AB0L (Formerly N0KAI)
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