I unfortunately have little choice. I'll give it a shot.

Hi,

Thanks for the links and the tips. The speaker wires are about 8 feet long.  I guess, I should use the headphones and do this systematically.

Hi,

I have a problem with RF entering my small bedroom home theater system speakers.  I bought a bunch of "snap on" rf chokes, the square kind.  however, I can only get 3 turns of the speaker wires through them and even 2 on the wires doesn't stop the sound coming in over the speakers.  I also placed these on the power cord of the amp and it didn't help.  Again, it could only hold 4 turns.
Is there a source for something a little bigger like a toroidal core?  What about twisted pair wiring for the speakers?  I have this issue at 40M and 20M with 100 w.  The antenna is located about 10 feet from the stereo in my attic.  Is all hope lost?  I can't use this in the evening until the wife goes to bed.

Thanks!

Well, tonight I had better success!  My first contact (my second overall) was to someone in Russia.  Very short though, just gave me a 5-9 and that was it.

HI Allison,

I did do a bit of research before I built it but I do have a few regrets.
I replaced all resistors with metal oxide resistors and all electrolytics with new ones.  Based on comments from the heathkit forums, I did not replace the silver mica's nor the ceramic caps.  If I was to do it again I would replace the ceramics...I had one that failed only under power as I mentioned in this thread.
I did buy 2 new jackson drives as well.  I would have also bought new sockets...some of the issues I had were directly related to the oxidation on the tube pins.  Right now though, the rig is working great except for 28.5, where I have no output.  Will work on this though.

lol!

Ok, makes sense now!  I am a rookie having only one contact so far!
Only problem I have for other bands at the moment is RFI into the bedroom's home theater system which prevents earlier use until my chokes arrive.

I did hear someone from Kuwait last night on 14,200, but I couldn't get through the pileup.

Time to learn a little more.

I really appreciate all of the help I've had here from everyone!

It seems that the protons must be in the wrong monthly cycle!

Seriously, the radio is working very well.  The big improvement came from cleaning the tube pins and sockets.  Sort of forgot that during build.

The same thing happened the first time I used it, a few hours of cq and only one contact where I accidently interrupted someone elses CQ. Perhaps it was the hour of the day and the propagation? i was on 20M at 1 AM.

Well, I've been on the air tonight...2 1/2 hours of CQ's or trying to break through a pile up on 20M, and not one contact...
Is this normal?

Wow, thanks for the great info!  I had not seen those mods before Steve.

Everything seems to be ok at the moment except for one thing that was there since the beginning.
The 28.5 MHz heterodyne coil is problematic to adjust.  When I measure the voltage at the testpoint it reads -0.237V.  If I adjust it into range, (-0.8 to -2.0) it doesn't react right away and then it can be adjusted.  It seems to stay like this for a while, 15-30 minutes, but then after this it will test right back at -0.237.
Again I can adjust it back but the pattern seems to repeat itself.
I have resoldered it, but it doesn't seem to make any difference.  Any ideas about this?  This is the cause for the 10M output all of a sudden falling off.

Thanks

Transmit problem solved!
I determined that the IF amp was working fine.  From there it goes trough a resistor (R202) a 10k resistor.  From here it goes directly to the grid of the first transmitter mixer.  However, the IF signal never appeared on pin 2.  It was on the other side of the resistor but never made it through!  (If someone could explain this I would be grateful!)

So I checked the voltages on the ist tran-mixer and on pin three it was supposed to be 300V on receive and 170 on transmit.  It was 14 and 16.  So I swapped the mic amp tube (a 6EA8 also) and I got full transmitter output on tune.  So all the problems I had before led to blowing this tube (i.e. running the transmit mode for long periods without a load).
So now I need to buy a 6EA8 and not the outputs.

One other question: a new problem appeared now (now I know why these can be called griefkits! ) Upon the release of the transmit mode, I do not get receive back for some time, and the S meter is pegged during this process.  At this time the ALC tube (6BN8 is very microphonic...a problem I had intermittently since the beginning).  When a tube is microphonic does that mean it is going?

I have now learned how to troubleshoot!!

Thanks for the tips!  I did not realize that the cathode will couple to the grid if the signal is missing.  This will help a lot!  I am learning a lot from this whole process and now I think I will go to an advanced license. But I only have 1 contact so far when the radio was working.  I do have a new oscilloscope.  My Gould 20 MH storage scope died during testing.  I bought a new GWIntek 60 Mhz for $580 new.  Wow, scopes have progressed!!

Anyways, I bought this for living my dream as a kid.  I will buy a modern rig when I have 20 countries under my belt!  Then again if I can figure out how to use my Icom r-9000 as a receiver with the hw-101, I might not for a while.

Hi, No the power supply is set for 350.  It actually measures 333 under load.
As to the current problem with the transmitter stages, I thought about how the cap effected the radio overall. It effectively put the transmitter in transmit as normal, but there was no tuning ever done, and there  was no dummy load attached.  Wouldn't this only damage the outputs?  Why would I now have all the currect problems?

I think this one is going to be tougher.

Seems that the outputs are not driven.
The driver is not driven
The second transmitter mixer has no output.  But here is the issue: The circuit mixes the the 8.5 MHz signal from the 1st transmitter mixer on the grid and the 12.4MHz signal from the heterodyne Osc is applied to the cathode.  However both pins have 12.4 MHz on them!
Same thing happens in the First transmitter mixer. The grid is supposed to have  the 3.395 IF signal and the cathod the 5.105 VFO signal.  Again both signals are at 5.105!  Of course the result is that nothing gets through the 8.395MHGz bandpass filter and there is no drive to subsequent stages.

Now given the troubles that I had where the relay energized in receive mode, is it possible that both tubes are now defective? Shorted? It doesn't show up on the ohm meter.

Any ideas?

Problem solved!!

The problem turned out to be in the area I was looking.  When in CW mode for receive, the tone oscillator (836Hz in my case)  is turned on but the tone amp is supposed to be off.  The tone amp can only be turned on by pressing the CW key which raises the voltage to the grid (normally at -70V for turn off and 0 for key on) .  However the circuit acted like the key was pressed all the time.  Hence the tone and the transmit relays going on.  The only way that this could happen I figured is that one of the bypass caps in this circuit was shorting when a voltage went on (C213).  So I removed it and tested it.  It tested fine with my tester.  None-the-less I replaced it and now the problem is gone.

Now to work on the transmit.  The bias no longer changes when I go in transmit mode....gotta look at this next.

I will.  However, what I have done is resoldered and replaced the resistors that "turn on" the relay amp in cw receive.   i checked all parts, redid some soldering in those circuits and then turned on the radio.
Now, now the original problem is back, the tone in cw that turns on the relays in receive mode and the antenna is connected to the transmit circuit, and I always hear the 836hz tone.  I will now let this rest for a day.  The only funny thing that has existed from the beginning is that the resistance test between lug of the cw jack and ground is always 50k.  It is supposed to be 70k but when the leads are reversed it goes to 50k as it should.  I checked the diode and it tests ok.

One other note though, the bias voltage to the finals is -60 in receive and does not change to +60 in transmit ( it did once).  So the smell I noticed is most likely a resistor or a the choke in this circuit due to the issues that are unrelated