I bought a new-to-me radio. It is a used FT-7800R dual-band (2m/70cm) mobile. The price was right: $195 before taxes. Once I got it, I high-tailed it home and opened the box and….

POW.

It hit me. The stink of cigarette smoke.  Not enough to knock me over, but enough to potentially stink me out.

So I asked Twitter, Facebook, and a few locals how to get the smell out.  Their answers (all good ones) are in the Storify story below.

So I did with what I could with what I had.  The images below tell the story.

I took the rig apart and put it in a box.

I sprinkled lots of baking soda all over the parts. I left it like this overnight.

I attached a fan to the side of the box.

I let the fan run for a while, maybe 12 hours. Yes, I ran it with an expensive linear power supply!

After running it (with this as a small exhaust), I did a smell test over this, and viola! No noticeable smell.

So the exciting conclusion is that this was mounted in my truck on Saturday night, and I got into the truck on Sunday night to actually test the radio (after having it mounted for nearly 24 hours in an enclosed truck in my garage).  I detected no smell of smoke in my truck.  While nobody was on the local repeater to assist in my test, I had handed one of my HTs to my wife and she gave me a thumbs-up indicating that indeed, the sound was good.  Also, I’ve had good sound reports on the morning drive, too.

At any rate, this is one of those “your mileage may vary” situations.  I may be right, or I may be lucky.  But I’m not smelling smoke!

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