Last summer I acquired a Kenwood TS-830s from the estate sale of William Morris - WA9HSK. The radio was in excellent condition and worked perfectly from the moment I powered it up. I've had a couple hundred contacts in the short time I've owned it. With the help of my wife Julie, handling the logging and the extra set of ears, I participated in the 2016 Illinois QSO party where I made almost 200 contacts.
The other day while tuning up, I found that I couldn't load up for more than 40 watts. I checked all my connections and SWR, but just couldn't get much power out. The plate's were loading only about half the normal current and the HV meter indicated only about 400 volts. A few minutes of research and I found that the HV capacitors are the likely culprit.
I bled off the voltage from the capacitors, clipped the wires, and tested with my DMM. Ah hah! One immediately shows infinite resistance, while the other jumped high and very slowly decreased. Based on this test method, I don't actually know which one is bad, but at least I know that one of them is... which would explain why I'm only getting about half of the expected voltage. Normally when these capacitors go bad, there is some visible sign, puffing, leakage, etc... but not in this case.
Fortunately for me, K4EAA runs a webstore that caters to TS-830 owners that wish to keep these great radios in working order. For $30 shipped, I'm getting the 2 HV caps, 2 bypass caps, and 2 bleeding resistors. http://k4eaa.com/hv-150b.html
Once they arrive and I get them installed, I'll post a followup.
