Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Turns out the design of the Denpa MZ-22 is just as bad, or rather it is even worse.

The head was hard to get to...while less prying, there were more screws. Also the cable web inside the head prevents access to the solder points for the battery.

Worse the battery is upside down, so I won't know what kind of battery until I remove it.

It crossed my mind that perhaps I'd find out how much it would cost to send off two radios to get batteries replaced, etc. But, as I was putting it back together, I wondered about the funny scorch marks on the underside of the lid.

Apparently I burned out some transistors on the board years ago when it was my packet radio....not sure if worked the last time I used it...so it might be fried. My fuzzy recollection was that I had some kind of issue with it, which caused me to go back to using my HT for packet. So, that's probably why I was having issues with it.

I wonder if new radios are better or worse with this. I suppose the fact that virtually all mobiles these days have removable/remoteable heads might lead to easier to replace batteries.

Just not sure when I'll get a mobile rig now.