I'm a bit leery about using sandpaper in a situation like that as the residue is non-conductive and solder resistant. Steel wool might be the better choice.

The flip side of this is that I won't use steel wool anywhere near a PC board as it throws shards that are conductive. Given the size of SMT parts it doesn't take much to make an unintentional circuit modification.

I hate it when questions like this go unanimous...

About 12 years ago Fair Radio Sales of Lima, OH advertised surplus Lambda power supplies in several sizes. I ordered two 19 amp / 15 vdc jobbies for $75 each. Visualize an extended length cinder block with a barrier strip on one end. They arrived in near-mint condition and best guess is they were warehouse spares that obsoleted on the shelf.

I can't run a 12 volt radio on a 15 volt supply. Sure I can... The bottom end of the tweaker is ~ 11.5 volts and they run OK Fine at 14.0000 volts. 19 amps isn't heavy enough. Like hell. That's a continuous rating and I have nothing in the shack that will overload them. Voltage regulation is within .1 volt from RX to TX using an IC-756 in RTTY at full output.

Nice thing about them is that they're a fairly straight LM723 design with eight pass transistors instead of the usual four. This should reduce the chance of any one of them shorting out. Not that it can't happen, but...

In all fairness I also have an Astron RS-35A and an Astron RS-7A with a Motorola logo on the front panel. Both are perfectly wonderful, but if you can score a Lambda in good shape at a decent price you'll find the build quality is noticeably better in the Lambda.

Poke around here to see if you can find something similar enough to be helpful:

http://bama.edebris.com/manuals/simpson/

I doubt if every VOM model Simpson made was 100% unique.

Useful Factoids:

Nicola Tesla attended the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz but stopped showing up for class in the first semester of his third year. Never graduated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Thomas Alva Edison attended grade school but there is little mention of anything beyond. One of his teachers thought he was 'addled' as his attention tended to wander.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison

Michael Faraday attended lectures by noted physicists of his day but was not considered a 'gentleman' as he had no nobility in his family. This limited his access to higher education.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday

Alessandro Volta was educated in the public schools of Como, Italy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Volta

Andre-Marie Ampere was considered a child prodigy and attended the Polytechnic School in Paris as a subordinate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9-Marie_Amp%C3%A8re

If you multiply Volta by Ampere you get...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watt

Who had little to do with electrical theory but did invent the modern steam engine which can be used to generate Volta's and Ampere's. Watt attended school irregularly.

Please do not take any of this as a slam against education as I like to think I have one myself and my alumni association keeps reminding me of that by sending out donation appeals every year. Then there's that fancy piece of paper with the word 'Bachelor' on it... But I digress.

A degree, certification, diploma, whatever, is a milepost on the journey of life. A good education will teach someone how to analyze, research and resolve issues while discovering how much more there is to learn.

Same deal with Ham Radio... If you work it right.

"It might be said now that I have the best of both worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree."

--- John Fitzgerald Kennedy on receiving an honorary degree from Yale, June 12, 1963

There is a difference.

Wrong... WA4D... The title of your post was "The Elmer Concept is no longer relevant"

And after the response I've seen it looks to me like WA4D is no longer relevant.

BTW: My Elmer's were the poor bastards with the patience of Job who worked behind the counter at the local TV repair parts house (remember those) and always knew more than I did... Which was what kept me coming back... And the slim but enlightening assortment of tech books at the library.

Also have a cousin who was a Tech back in the days of 2 Meter AM in the 60's and is still licensed today, but lived about 100 miles away so my exposure to the shack was modest. But, it was good to know that radio could be practiced in a dense urban area.

That was my first Q... About seven miles away, but I've done better since.

Good comment on the noisy power supply. Easy way to check that is to unplug the antenna from the rig... If the noise is running anything above an S-1 with no antenna, it's internal.

BTW: I had a curious situation a few months back. Decided to start using the HT again and whenever I put it on the table next to the bed it wouldn't scan. Squelch opened up on noise. What's on the table? A phone and a battery operated 'atomic' clock.

The clock is the noise generator. Kinda' counter-intuitive to think that a clock with a 60 kHz RX inside would throw that much hash on 2 Meters, but it does...

A few years ago there was an article in one of the major Ham mags about an OM trying to track down a noise source that seemed to move around. Took a while, but he finally pegged it to his pager. Sometimes the pager was on his belt, sometimes not. Hence the difficulty in finding the culprit.

 

If you have aluminum siding or metal wall studs an indoor antenna won't cut it.

If not, the next step is to take your fav-o-rite battery operated AM radio out the the garage and tune it to a spot at the top of the band where you hear nothing but noise. Turn off all the breakers in the breaker box one by one and note if any have an effect on the noise level.

If one or more circuits are a noise source, figure out what's on that circuit and what can be done to put a muffler on it.

If you can turn off the entire house and still have the same noise level...

Move.

A little blurry, but the same concept is used for both an SO-239 and BNC chassis mount...

http://www.physics.sfsu.edu/~rbecerra/radio.jpg

Center conductor straight into the center pin, ground the braid to one of the screws on the SO-239 via a solder lug or ring terminal. The braid can be unbraided and formed into a stranded wire. Straight line if possible, the least amount of unshielded coax the better.

Check Part 97 for the regs on spectral purity and harmonic suppression. Anything beyond QRP that's unfiltered is a really bad idea and even the QRP folks do lowpass filtering as a nod to good engineering practice.

The bands are a shared resource. You're responsible for your signal, including the harmonics.

I've seen them as well... One black stripe in the center of the resistor body, same size as a 1/4 ohm.

It's a wire jumper.

BTW: My mystery part for the week is an 'Alternistor'. Tore down a PC board assembly I picked up at a surplus store for the heat sink and it had ten of them. It's a triac (back to back SCR's) tweaked for controlling heavily inductive loads like motors and transformers. Part # is TODV640 if anyone is interested, easy search on the web for the SGS-Thomson spec sheet.

Last weeks mystery part was the GE D67DE5... Darlington pair and a real brute of a pass transistor in a 'brick' style case. 100 amp continuous, 150 amp peak, 600 PIV and that's not the biggest one they make. Found four of them in an old UPS. Makes a 253055 look like an underachiever.

Wouldn't have figured out either of these with an ohm meter, but thanks to the web...........

If you don't have a large iron capable of generating enough thermal mass to go in hot and get out quick you will melt the dielectric. Yes, you are supposed to solder through at least one or more holes in the PL-259 shell but with a lightweight coax like RG-58 the chances of damaging the coax from heat are greater than the risk from a bad compression contact with the braid.

That's why I suggested you try it. Make up a jumper with only the center pins soldered and see if it holds up. If not, you can always solder the shell later. Twist the braid around the reducer in the same direction as the shell will tighten and make sure there's enough of a 'wad' to crunch down when tight. You might also consider a light tinning of the braid to add a bit more mass inside the shell, but not so much that it can't squish down easily.

I use a Weller 85 watt iron with a chisel tip ($25 at Lowe's last time I looked) and if you have a local store catering to stained glass hobbyists they will have big irons in stock. I've had very poor luck with foam RG-8X on a PL-259 as it melts much too easily and haven't soldered the braid with 8X for a few years because of that. No problems so far.

BTW: If someone hasn't mentioned it yet, always solder the center pin first. With RG-213 in particular the connector will try to unscrew itself when heated if the pin isn't soldered first.

Intermittent is the word that jumped out at me and that makes me think cold solder joint or internal short. Any chance you're using a slaughtering gun (spelling intentional) or a 25-35 watt pencil iron? Might also check your solder to see if it's 60/40 and not 40/60. 60/40 solders much easier and both are common.

If so, you might want to consider soldering only the center pin. Prep the coax as normal, make sure you have enough braid folded over the reducer that it will make a reliable compression contact with the PL-259 shell, tighten securely, solder the center pin. On small coax like '58 I've been known to trim the center conductor long and fold it over so I have some extra metal inside the sleeve. Makes it more likely the solder will bond the two together.

It's very easy to get a cold joint with a soldering gun, very easy to melt the dielectric with a small iron that takes forever to bring the shell up to temperature. That will get you an internal short.

I've also come across cheap PL-259's that are solder resistant. Started buying the Amphenol nickel plated jobbies at Hamfests as they're not that expensive when you buy a dozen at a time. The QC is consistent and I've had good luck with them.

I use Q-Tips and Isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol. Take your time and use plenty of Q-Tips. If the battery contacts appear pitted or darkened, try scraping them with a small screwdriver to see if the crud can be chipped off. Get them as smooth and shiny as you can. As a last resort on a stubborn case you might consider re-tinning them with some silver solder, but there's a good chance of making it worse in the process. Practice on some wire scraps and be sure the soldering iron tip is clean and nicely tinned before you try that.

After it's as clean as you can get it, give the battery contacts an rub with a little WD-40 or CRC-26 on a Q-Tip.

If you have a special situation... Like approximately midway between two or more metro areas with nothing much between... A colinear vertical can make sense.

Otherwise, a lower gain, broader pattern can yield more Q's. Especially if you like to chase Sporadic E. In general terms one S-Unit is 6dB and it's rare that +/- one S-Unit will make the difference between Q or No-Q, dropping 3 dB in favor of a broader pattern isn't always a bad trade.

Back when I was getting started there was a local FM simplex rag chew group on Two. DX station broke in one night and a neighbor of mine couldn't make the Q with 50 watts and a 13 el Cushcraft. I did with 10 watts into an Isopole. Best guess is that it had everything to do with the angle of radiation.

If you don't have a path or the angles don't line up power is not going to make it happen.

All I know is that about 30 years ago I bought a Dentron SWR meter. Cute little guy. Has one meter for forward power, another for reflected, and a knob between them labeled 'Caliblation'.

Works fine.

Last night I was surfing specs on MOSFET RF transistors and amplifier modules. Toshiba and Mitsubishi make a remarkably complete line of parts for almost every need and a Toshiba spec sheet told me the mounting 'frange' is both DC and RF ground.

Once you realize that 'R' is 'L' in Japanese the rest is easy...