My Wouxon KG-UV8D stopped working the other day.
Two thoughts crossed my mind simultaneously:
“Oh bugger, I suppose I’ll have to spend out on a new handheld now”.
“Yay! I can go shopping for a new handheld now”.
Still, being the curious radio amateur that I am, I decided to see if it was fixable.
A quick investigation showed the battery had run out of charge, despite it sitting in the charger for the previous 24 hours. Hmmm. I checked the charger, and sure enough, there was no voltage on the terminals.
I was somewhat dismayed when I opened up the charger and could see nothing immediately obvious. Also, it was nearly all SMD… all too small and fiddly for my liking – I like proper components that you can actually pick up with your fingers.
Also also, I couldn’t find a schematic for it.
But, I started tracing voltages through anyway and it wasn’t long before I found a component with volts and one side and nada on the other. Either a diode or a blown resistor, maybe. It had no values shown on it, just the letter H. A bit of research on the internets and some conversations with some fellow hams suggested it was most likely a 1A fuse. Bridging it with a piece of wire proved that to be the most likely case as the charger started working properly.
I didn’t want to leave the fuse bridged out – fuses are there for a reason after all – but a replacement SMD fuse on ebay was about four quid. Yes, four quid! For a fuse!
So, I used a 20mm cartridge fuse of the right value, slipped some heatshrink over it and wired that in instead.
Put it all back together and it works a treat. No need to buy a new one.
Whilst trying to find a schematic on the internet, I read of many instances where this charger has failed, so I thought I’d write it up here for anyone who might have a similar issue.