Yaesu FT-250R Charger problems

[K7SGJ]

Because of the price of the charger, they probably figure it's expendable; you probably have nothing to lose if you open it up. Will the radio accept a regular wall wort type charger? If so, you can see if the battery will charge with it, run it down, and recharge it again. If that works, get out the iron and screwdriver.

ETA With Kenwood, the service info for accys are in the service manual of the radio(s) the accys are used with. I don't think Yaesu does that, but you might check.

[n2ize]

Because of the price of the charger, they probably figure it's expendable; you probably have nothing to lose if you open it up. Will the radio accept a regular wall wort type charger? If so, you can see if the battery will charge with it, run it down, and recharge it again. If that works, get out the iron and screwdriver.

ETA With Kenwood, the service info for accys are in the service manual of the radio(s) the accys are used with. I don't think Yaesu does that, but you might check.

The radio does have a jack for an external DC power source but I don't know if it charges the battery as well. I might open the charger and see if anything is shorted or fried inside. The problem is that I ran the battery down extremely low. I had it on "APO = Automatic Power Off" and it shut off but I forgot about it and by the time I looked at it today the battery was so low that even the APO icon won't appear on screen. I think I remember reading somewhere that if it detects a bad pack it will blink some sort of error.

I might just order the alkaline battery pack and stuffit full of NiCAD or NiMH cells. That way I can just use regular alkali AA cells or NiCAD / NiMH cells that I can charge in any standard charger.

Meanwhile I might fire an email off to yaesu and ask them what they feel might be wrong.

[n2ize]

I fiired off an email to Yaesu. Hopefully I will hear from them within the next several days. ;)