Hello. I am not a pro when it comes to tranceivers. I decided to join this forum because someone gave me a Yaesu FT-101. It's just plain ol' FT-101. It must be one of the originals. The person who gave it to me hadn't used it for years and years, and it has been stored in a dry place. I must admit to being rather clueless and uneducated about radio equipment, and when it came to powering it up, I wasted quite a bit of time because I didn't know what the knobs did. After a few days I actually had the set receiving some stations with a few metres of wire as an antenna. I also learned a bit about getting the FT-101 to recieve from Youtube.
I was slowly getting better at finding stations and started to figure out what the USB/LSB/tune/CW & AM switch was meant for. Finally I was able to find stations in English and I was becoming more interested and wanted to get it going as well as it could get. But after a couple of days, I noticed the sound level was dropping, and then the preselect wasn't making any difference in the sharpness of the tuning as it did previously. As it is now, I can receive only barely, and the problem doesn't seem to be anything to do with the settings on the front.
My aim is to get it going again. I figured that as it was working (somewhat) earlier, and that the sound level and radio sensitivity took a few days to bottom-out, it might be a capacitor or three that gave up the ghost after having electrons whizzing through them after decades of being redundant. But I don't really know anything. I thought it was interesting about the preselect formerly working, but now being unresponsive might indicate a specific area or board to check.
I would like some help. I would be very grateful. The set came with a spare set of output tubes. I have other radios which pick up SW. My favourite standby radio is my Sony D2001. But the 35kg Yaesu is the one I want to use.
I'm not extremely good with electronics, but I'm not totally useless. I am, however, keen on learning.
Thank you for ploughing through this newbie begging letter.