Hi Andy, finally had time to go on with the snake rig.
Short story: it had a cut on the upper trace on the SWR board making a short. It was barely visible and i realized the continuity check on this trace had not been done yet. Actually the only one left, as i checked everything else. This explains why the symptom showed as faulty diodes having continuity on both directions.
I scratched a little the trace to uncover the copper and applied some solder.
Now the functionality is back and works as it should.
Rig works nicely with great receive and transmit, maybe a slight frequency alignment is still left, at least checking on frequency meter how it's performing on this side.
I'll also have a look at the bias setting, it's supposed to be around 50mA if I am not mistaken, on both driver and PA side.
Thanks for your support, I have learned new things from your responses, and it's nice to have a radio working as it should (even if it's the SWR meter which is not the most accurate, but still, it's there, it has to work as it did originally).
