ICOM 2730a - Fan replacement

I purchased an ICOM 2730a, dual band UHF/VHF rig. Its a mobile rig, but I use it at home, as a base, connected to a dual-band open stub J-pole. Works well for me.

One of the downsides of this, is it is on a shelf, at about eye (ear) level, in a quiet environment. Every time I keyd up, I woudl get a min or so of *very loud* cooling fan. This is not a great design. No temp sensor, does not matter what power level. I decided I needed to address it.

I located and purchased a Noctua NF-A4x20 FLX fan. Amazon.com

It cost me about 12 bucks. This is the same size as the original. Slightly less airflow - so if you talk for hours on high-power buyer beware, there may be marginally less cooling capacity here. I tend not to use high power much. I also tend not to have long conversations so I was not concerned. If you are concerned, you can set this to "always on" in the menu - it is quiet enough you will not hear it. It is so quiet it took me a while to convince myself it was working. This particular fan was brown.

The box looks like this:

Containing


The swap out process was straight forward. Here is the back of the radio before I started.


I removed the 4 screws holding the fan in, and the fan backplate.
This did not really accomplish too much, as there was very little slack in the connecting wire.


I then removed the top. ***DO NOT DO THIS***. There is noting useful under the top for this project. Here is a pic if you are curios. Lots of heatsink and a speaker.


I replaced the top, and turned it over and removed the bottom. These screws were really tight - make sure you have the right screwdriver so as not to strip them.
Thats more like it.


You can see the wire connecting the fan to the motherboard. Thankfully it has a plug on it.


If you have a spare one of these plugs, you can skip the next few steps. I did not, so I cut the exisitng plug from the old fan, snd spliced it to the new fan. Red wire to red wire, black wire to black wire, Do nothing with the yellow wire. A spot of solder and some insulating tape.


Here is the old fan now removed


Carefully feed the wire through the chassis, and plug it in. Replace the 4 scres and backplate on the fan.


Then replace the bottom of the radio


When you hook it up, take a moment (a flashlight helps) and make sure you can see the fan spinning and feel the air moving when you key up.

Now enjoy not hearing your fan.

This is fairly easily reversed, by splicing the plug back on the old fan. I am sure there are other suitable fans - i am a big fan (no pun intended) of Noctua, as they are seriously quiet and well contructed.