Xiegu X108G Transceiver
 

Someone has asked me to have a look at this radio. I always avoid these type of sets and this chap has asked me about repairing this set in the past and I've always told him that there's not a lot that I can do with such radios. However, when I was at his house last week helping him with yet another antenna, he asked me if I would take the radio away with me and just have a look at it, as it was no good as it was and would basically be scrap. He asked if I could just look inside it to see if I could see anything obvious, so to keep him happy I said I would, but with absolutely no promises, for some reason he seems to think that I can fix anything - I don't know where he gets that idea from! He gives me all sorts of bits and pieces for helping him out, so I thought I'd see what I could make of the thing and it might actually be interesting to play around with it.

I had a fiddle about with it and it's now actually working, but I don't actually know what I did to fix it, although I suspect that it was probably a software/firmware 'glitch'. The four function buttons proved to be virtually unusable and the two up and down buttons at the far right hand side didn't work at all. I pulled it to bits to have a look at the innards and cleaned the contact surfaces of where the conductive pads press on the circuit board with IPA and all the buttons now work, but I still wouldn't say they're absolutely perfect. I deliberately left the conductive surfaces of the pads themselves, although I could possibly give them a clean and apply a bit of graphite to them, but didn't want to push my luck at this stage.

I remember when it was working, him saying that he wanted it expanding. Looking into this it seems that R76 needs lifting on the small signal board, but unless it's just me, I couldn't for the life of me see it, and there's no component markings on that board or in the service manual that I could see. Does anyone know where this resistor is and can point me to it? I've bunged it all back together again for the time being so as not to have it laying around in bits and liable to possible damage. If I can't find out about this particular mod, or it looks too awkward, then I may just let him have it back and tell him it can't be done. I remember him asking about FM on it, but I seem to remember looking into this at the time and it seemed it needed some sort of 'add-on' from the manufacturers.

Pictures below that I took of the innards while it was apart. What I would say about one of these for anyone taking one apart - be aware of all the very messy heatsink compound on the underside of the innards and take care not to get it on your fingers etc. Also, mind you don't trap one of the miniature coax cables under one the rear brass spacing pillars (as I nearly did) on reassembly, they have to be removed to gain access to the underside of the board.

So what do we know about this 'R76' and where is it?

Pictures:-

Re: Xiegu X108G Transceiver
 

More pictures and all back together and working:-

Re: Xiegu X108G Transceiver
 

Taken from a Russian website, so use at your own risk:-

https://www.rk3bx.ru/xiegu-x108g/

Re: Xiegu X108G Transceiver
 

Many thanks Graham. I'll study that and see what I think.

Re: Xiegu X108G Transceiver
 

If you do a search on Groups.io for Xiegu, there are a lot of hits for forums that cover radios made by the company.

Cheers

Roger

Re: Xiegu X108G Transceiver
 

Thanks Roger. That's a useful piece of information. I had done a general search for information on the radio before I posted, but found that it was on forums that you needed to be registered with to be able to see the vital bits of info. However, I hadn't seen the website that Graham linked to, which seems to have the required information that I need. At least one of the links on that web page goes to a forum site that I'd already looked at, but needed registration/membership to access the required information such as pictures and circuits etc. I've not opened the radio up again yet, but I may do to see about doing that mod.