The main concern is this...
Although the circumstances surrounding this board being broken off - well - best left unsaid...
You can break the vertical cards - ON TOP of their ability to shear off the connections to the main PCB from themselves by vibration - I don't want what happened to a good radio - happen to you...
The above is from abuse, but I know you're trying to be careful - I don't want you to fail - but one of the main things against you is the age of the board - another is experience.
The above abuse was intentional but that was long ago - I still have the board and keep the radio as a template for comparison to others to come thru the (former) shop. Missing FM board is obvious, one of the many things you don't want to see but you can, and because it will happen.
In a way, you are dealing with a similar situation on your end right now. Your radio could wind up like that above - a broken card and have to find a way to pipe RF across it and still try to make the radio work.
So - take your time - patience is a virtue and you'll need a lot of that, as you work on a radio such as this. This isn't a simple CB, but Amateur - so there is a level of intricacy that makes an HR2510 different from other radios.
The caps may be making this problem with SWR intermittent. However, they haven't been installed yet... so the only reason why I mentioned the SWR card, is because of it's size, and proximity to the work you'll be doing. You can replace parts until the problem goes away, but the process of starting that procedure - Best we're trying to do is pointing you to where the problem is, which makes less parts having to be ripped out and the less fingering and soldering on an old radio. That efficiency you can do, the better the radio survives.
WE don't want you to stick a finger or hand by a card to support the weight of the radio as you turn it over to check soldering. That can break cards - I've seen Midlands became Epic fails from a simple rotation and the clerk is screaming at the customer "You broke it".
From Circuit Snippets
Instead of a simple sale - it turns into a bad PR mess for the shop...Toxic...
The insides of this radio is a Midland 77-115 - one of many radios Midland and others produced with a Vertical card design that wound up making many of these radio concepts useless for Mobile situations - a simple torque of the bracket is enough to break the foil traces rendering the receiver useless. Bends the board, and not just the vertical cards on the main PCB, but a row of traces handing the CPU to front panel and it's communication can be sheared off from someone overextending the mic cord, pulling the front panel board and mount away from the main PCB header - poof ...
So consider yourself lucky the stories I can tell are NOT in your own Diary..
