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Post by MonkeyMan on Oct 11, 2018 6:28:10 GMT -5
Gonna make an effort to get in there tonight. Evidently not enough of an effort........ Apparently not enough memory, lol. It was about 9:45 when I remembered, and by that point I was just about done with the day. Next week!
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Post by BBB on Oct 15, 2018 17:25:41 GMT -5
Oh, you missed a good one. Had my Trashy Tram 3-Knobber out for a spin. Been having a few new check-ins lately as well.
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Sandbagger
Administrator/The Boss
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Post by Sandbagger on Oct 16, 2018 16:03:55 GMT -5
Well last week a few of us ran our 3 knob radios as part of the theme for the week. So that was cool. And speaking of cool, the weather out here in Classic Radio Roundup land has turned a very autumn cool, so you know what that means....... Tube radios again! This Wednesday night's CRR, I will be running one of my Tube rigs. Not sure if it will be Tram, Browning, Sonar, or Lafayette, but one of them will grace the table this week.
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Sandbagger
Administrator/The Boss
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Post by Sandbagger on Oct 22, 2018 16:32:26 GMT -5
Cool weather made for an excellent backdrop to debut my Browning MKIII for the first time this season. Turn out for CRR was a little on the light side. Maybe between Sparky's and my Browning pinging back and forth at each other, we drove everyone else mad....... . The weather is still looking to be on the cool side again this week, so I'll switch from Browning to Tram and throw the D201 up on the bench. At least this one won't ping......
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Post by MonkeyMan on Oct 23, 2018 7:19:50 GMT -5
Writing a reminder, backwards, with a Sharpie, on my forehead... "CRR Wednesday night @ 8:00". Now, I just have to remember to look in the mirror.
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Post by cbrown on Oct 24, 2018 12:26:43 GMT -5
Or slap your palm against your forehead and read it that way.
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Sandbagger
Administrator/The Boss
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Post by Sandbagger on Oct 25, 2018 15:56:23 GMT -5
Well, it was good to see that Monkey Man remembered to blow the dust of of his radios and join the roundup this week. In keeping with my cool weather tube theme, the D201 graced my operating table this time. Pete ran his newly acquired Utica Town and Country II, and Sparky was in J.C. Penney mode.As an added bonus, Pete managed to get his tablet working again, and we will have a videogate for the first time in many months.
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Post by MonkeyMan on Oct 26, 2018 10:50:37 GMT -5
Well, it was good to see that Monkey Man remembered to blow the dust of of his radios and join the roundup this week... Happy to be in there, and would have liked to stay longer. Next time I'll try to block off the entire two hours. I have no tube CB's, but while I was on the air my Nobsound (Chineese junk) tube amp and JVC T-X55 tuner were supplying the tunes.
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Sandbagger
Administrator/The Boss
Posts: 6,247
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Post by Sandbagger on Dec 7, 2018 20:58:52 GMT -5
Well, here's another lesson to learn when you run old radios. Even when you think you've replaced all the parts that typically fail with age, you never know when that "lasts almost forever" part decides that being immortal is not for them. Such was the case this week for me. Sunday night, since the 10 meter SNUBWAP net was basically a no-show, I decided to put my Tram Titan up on the bench and give it a tune-up, in preparation to run on Wednesday night's CRR. I went through the motions and had everything up to snuff, with the receiver boasting a .2 uV sensitivity. It was playing along merrily on my bench, and I started fiddling with the controls. I turned on the noise limiter and advanced it all the way a couple of times and observed just how badly the audio was distorted by it. I was in the process of turning it up again for the 3rd time when the sound muted like the squelch had suddenly closed (but it was all the way down). I quickly turned the limiter off, and the receive briefly unmuted but the receiver gain was reduced. Then I saw the unmistakable signs that the magic smoke was being let out somewhere. I quickly turned the radio off and flipped the chassis over to see which part had zorched. It didn't take long to find the 2.2K resistor that feeds the B+ to one of the IF stages. But a look at the schematic was puzzling. The stage that the burned resistor was a part of had absolutely no connection to the noise limiter that I was playing around with right before it smoked. I left it alone for the night and picked it up again on Wednesday night during the Roundup. I had been hoping that the excess current, that caused the resistor to burn, hadn't damaged the IF transformer coils that the voltage went through before hitting the plate of the 6BA6 IF tube. I tested the tube for shorts and saw none. Just to be on the safe side, I replaced it with another tube I had on hand. Then for kicks and grins, I decided to check some resistances. I soon ran across something puzzling. There was about a 1K Ohm resistance to ground from the plate of the tube. Removing the tube didn't change anything. Cutting loose the 2.2K resistor (I was going to replace the smoked part anyway) pretty much isolated that part of the circuit, yet still the resistance remained. So I cut loose the only other thing in the circuit, a .01uF disk capacitor to ground. Lo and behold, there was my culprit. A very leaky disk cap. The caps that rarely ever go bad. But there it was.... Why did it choose to go bad while I was playing with the noise limiter? I'm guessing sheer coincidence. I can't think of anything thelimiter could have done to push that cap over its limit. It's a mystery for sure. But the good news is that I managed to make repairs in time to put the rig on the air for the second half of the Roundup. Whew! Keeping these old classics on the air can be challenging......
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Post by cbrown on Dec 12, 2018 15:05:03 GMT -5
Probably just coincidence that it failed why you were testing the noise limiter. Glad you caught it and found the problem.
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