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Author Topic: Bad Luck with SS Vintage Radios  (Read 1633 times)

W6SSP

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Re: Bad Luck with SS Vintage Radios
« Reply #45 on: July 08, 2022, 12:34:05 PM »

Interesting discussion with a wide variety of experiences. I'll admit to
being hooked on vintage ham gear of all types. Tube & solid state.
Especially finding dead rigs dirt cheap, fixing them and finally using
them on the air. My fave are the Kenwood hybrids and have been using/
fixing them since the TS-520 was first introduced. My experience has been
these are *some of the most reliable ham transceivers ever made*.
If not abused or subjected to moisture. I've probably got two dozen.
Same for the FT-101 (and later) series although not as many of them here.
Tube gear is easier to keep on the air in part because off the shelf parts
(for the most part) were used. Not always true of SS.

Anyone that has the desire to use vintage ham gear MUST learn how
to fix and align them. Its not hard but fewer and fewer hams seem to
be up to the task. In one way thats a shame but on the other, more
cool stuff available for those of us that can!

I'll relate a recent experience; at a hamfest just prior to the pandemic,
picked up a Heathkit HW-101 on the way out at the end of the day.
According to the seller, no one wanted it. Even for $10. E-gad!
Yeah, it came home and with a lot of work and fabricating two
missing shields, had it on the air and worked some DX with it.
Pretty darn cool for a $10 HF rig! Rescue these old rigs guys!
Steve
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W9MT

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Re: Bad Luck with SS Vintage Radios
« Reply #46 on: July 11, 2022, 05:12:39 PM »

Steve:

Heathkits are the Timex Watches of ham radio equipment (you know...take a licking and keep on ticking?).

I bought a $10 HW-16 and brought it home from an IL hamfest about 20 years ago. It had a layer of thin mud dried to the top of the chassis. Fortunately the bottom of the chassis was clean which meant something splashed onto it and it wasn't submerged in a basement floor drain sewer backup flood.

I pulled off the top cover and positioned the front panel and chassis vertically with the power transformer side down on the work bench surface. I removed all of the tubes. Then I went to work with isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush and gave it a good scrubbing until the chassis surface was clean. I then sprayed contact cleaner into the pins of the tube sockets. I tested the tubes, replacing a few that had shorted "innards", and then wiped their outer glass envelopes clean. I replaced them all into their sockets.

Then I attached the radio to a Variac and brought it up slowly...looking for signs of trouble. The neutraliztion trimmer, one of those ceramic types mounted in a hole in the transmitter section chassis, began to smoke. It was polluted with the muddy crud. I killed power, got a replacement and soldered it in. Back up on a Variac again to full power and the HW-16 worked like it was designed to do. I used it for years after that.

Have fun. Resurrection work for classic ham equipment is a fun sandbox in which to play. Just be careful of bloating your inventory of equipment !!!
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