Wayne has always seen a different color sky than the rest of us.  it was interesting in the 60s/70s as he spend most of his editorial ink on hamming.  MyCast does note there is a full moon now.

I just saw a poster on marketwatch say that Craftsman hand tool warranty is now down to 25 years with receipt, not lifetime, unlimited, instant replacement.  checked on the web site, and there are as many classes of warranty as there are tools, now.  plain old hand tools still have the unlimited warranty, but I suspect the variations have a lot to do with what island was above water overseas when the tool was made.

http://www.craftsman.com/cswarranty/nb-100000000227082?adCell=WF#point12

get the other guy's phone number from the installer and check his references.  there is no substitute for talking to the guy that has one.

if you can read the SWR with an external meter, it's transmitting something.  if you have to back down a unit with a sensitivity setting, it's probably transmitting well.  you'd need a meter with some level of calibration to see what the actual power out is.  half power, one transistor out.

I'm with the "read the manual" crowd here, download it and check your panel settings.  heck, I bought a FT890 from a friend and I couldn't get the freaking thing to turn on until I discovered a little button that had the thing coming up as general coverage, and an interlock in software was coming into play.  needed some prompting over SMS.  it was, shall we say, very lightly and glancingly covered in the manual.

this thread is the WTF.com of ham radio.  there is always another whiskey tango foxtrot.

Barnum smiles from the beyond...

when I had one as my Novice rig, back in 1970, it needed a case job.  took a picture and blew it up, back when I had color darkroom access... and used Datak lettering to relabel the panel.  I used two Krylon colors that were spot-on matches from the can for the original paint.

currently (that is, until several other things came up in the household) working on the +38V section of the infamous power supply.  going to have to go LM317T on it.

this has been a spare-time habit for a few years for me, and without the Signal/One disk from hamanuals.com and a spare transformer when Bill had parts chassis, it would not have been possible.

some of the spare 8072/4657 tubes I got from fleabay were as cheap as $7, so keep on looking.  I actually fell backwards into this rig, and back on ham radio, when there were three mint 4657s in a tube caddy cleanout auction I got for fixing some old 20s TRFs.

I could even spot you a tube if you need it and are ready for smoke test, email offline.  note, these are oxide-cathode tubes, on any of these old NOSs, you should pull plate and screen voltages, and cook 'em on filament only from a few hours to a day to be sure they are degassed.  I would recommend a fan on the heat sink for that cookdown, so it isn't a meltdown.  spare beryllium blocks are unobtainium, although you could machine new tube mount collars if you had to.

heh, ebay.

must be why my projects have too high a blown-the-hay-up ratio.

Allen Products used to make the Craftsman socket line, and their products are still good quality and US made.

Enderes Tools screwdrivers, allen wrenches, and things like punches, drifts, and small pry bars are US made and good stuff.  Last time I bought some of their 4-in-ones, they were made a little down the road in Minnesota.

Diamond Tools pliers and cutters were bought by Xcelite in the 80s, all are part of Cooper Tools  They're not made in Duluth, MN any more.  I have no love for many of Xcelite's small pliers, best used to eat rice.  but the ones with the Copaloy bearing are the old Diamond line, and may still be good.

the classic Vise-Grips pliers are now part of Irwin, and I don't think they are US made any more.  if you find a set with the old "Peterson Tools" stamp on them, those were Nebraska originals, and you can rely on them.

if the antenna is not stable, I'd go after that first.

one more old grump, I guess, who thinks that V instead of E is violating Ohm's Law.  I believe the penalty is I ^2 L

spray foam insulation is good for isolating the basement walls, and mineral wool batts in the floor joists with isolation channels for the drywall will take down noise between floors about as far as it will go.

I much prefer the thoughts of a junction box exit for your antenna cables, rather than any number of sweep ells as a weatherhead.  joints must be glued in PVC, otherwise water can and will get in.  I rewired some power stuff Dad put into the backyard three times before I decided (in estate sale) to redo it all to get rid of nagging device failures.  oh, looky here, none of the joints were glued!  sorta explained the inch of water in each of the waterproof device boxes.  cable exit out the bottom, use hole putty around the cables to keep mice and bugs out.

a heated floor in the basement shack should not cost more than $300 in supplies net, and installed cannot run you more than a grand even if you have a billionnaire do the physical work in his good tux.

enjoy the new home!

subwoofers run 200-400 watts AF power, you aren't going to have a wall wart for that.  it's a switcher.  only the base (mounting) plate is likely at ground level, and if it isn't, verify with a voltmeter you can ground it, and then do.

ferrites on all wires going to and from the switching PS, put a wrap-around on the AC line, and you might just slip some over the speaker connections in and out of the sub as well.

some switchers are just slapdash-engineered, and born noisy.  you might have to find out the DC voltages to the sub's power rails, get a transformer, and build a linear supply.  but you can try contacting the manufacturer cc the FCC with your noise report and see if they will make it right for you.

one note... I had to redo the primary side of a 16-channel logic analyzer in college because it was not reliable.  there were series toroids to the power line in that one, a brute-force filter with X-caps, and they had varnish into the solder holes on the board.  but if you don't have that brute-force filter, hang a Corcom job of 3 to 5 amps, and see if that works for you.  I have not seen big filter toroids on the board in a long, long time.

Motorola used to publish one in the 80s.  basically deep blue like the deep blue sea with all the military allocations.

ol' Moto ain't what it used to be, either.