The AM Forum

Hi all,

Of course when I go to get some information for an R390a restore I'm in the middle, I find that Chucks site www.r390a.com has disappeared. Bummer ... nice resource.

John

Hej !

Well, I'm in the same situation.... When I need it the most, it's gone?! Let's hope that it's back soon.

check the "wayback machine" on Archive.org?

Sometimes they keep enough of the site to be worthwhile.

                 _-_-bear

Funny you should me mention that. I just got one of the R390a out of storage and looked to that site as a reference. No joy. Wonder what is up with Chuck?

This is good if you don't already have it.

http://www.r-390a.net/Y2K-R3/00_Chapt_00.pdf

Interesting reading.

Already I found out I am in trouble over the past 20 years.

Me too, both of mine are "hanging" by the front panel...suppose I should install some support rails.
Anyone have an elegant way to do this?

WHAT!!!!!!!!! We'll have to have a "MYTH BUSTER" time. What did the military do with these things in those comm centers??They were just racked up and no problems there(?)
To ease removing mine out of the rack I installed 2X4's directly under the radio so that it sits on those and I use the rack screws to secure the radio to the rack and it contacts the rack for metal contact.....grounding.

I better check my printoouts of Chuck's pages. There was valuable info about maintenance and MYTH BUSTING reports on the ever familiar capacitor that kills the IF filters. There were reports a few years ago that he was burning out with R390A repairs.
And Rick Mish might be the only one left.
His approcah to a long going AGC problem for me was not encouraging. He told me  "almost all R390A filters are defective".

FRED

Howard Mills still does them...and just about everything else for that matter.

I use the W2JBL mods on all my killer capacitors.

And that would be what? Get a gun and shoot them dead?

Solder gun that is .... haw haw ....

J

Rack holes and available hardware don't always match a piece of equipment. If the support is in the rear and can not be made perfectly the right height, this lash-up is useful to move the back of the equipment up or down till the right shims, washers, or other adjustments are made. A level can be put on the equipment to check. That way, it can be almost perfectly level and the only stress on the front panel will be vertical. This is also useful when inserting heavy equipment into the rack.

FWIW I downloaded a lot of that info from the site as well as from the R390 mailing list's site. No site lasts forever. Has anyone talked to Chuck? What happened?

Chuck has a lot going on outside of radio. None of the following is private, it's not recent, and is what I learned in a couple of QSOs with him.  Some of you know the two of us are friends dating back to high school.

In the time since the last significant updates to the website, he deployed to the Persian Gulf during a Reserve callup, and was maintaining his ownership of a regional repair depot for one of the communications manufacturers.

For the R390(A) business, he unsuccessfully tried to mentor at least two people in the fine points of repair and restoration. Each moved on after a period of time, and he wasn't in a position to handle the continued load solo.

His parents have been getting up there in years, he's got a wife and daughter, and he was thinking of selling his place near the NC line and moving way south somewhere. He had tried to sell his mint Collins 20V2 a couple of times with an eye on making some changes in the time ahead.

So, as with Howard Mills, it's easy to get overloaded with repair jobs whether you want to or not, and I am guessing he has wanted to scale back for at least a while.

I don't have any direct knowledge about the website. Looks to me like he simply let the URL registration and/or server rental expire.

One of the easiest ways is to buy a rack shelf with ears on the front and back. We had a bunch of them come out of service at work when we discontinued the use of big, heavy broadcast tape machines (and went over to computer-based non-linear editing of HDTV field material now recorded on disc).

This one from Markertek holds up to 500 lbs.

http://www.markertek.com/Racks-Cases/Rack-Shelves-Drawers-etc/Middle-Atlantic-Products/AS3-22.xhtml?AS3-22

Just a thought: I'm assuming that Chuck still have the web on a computer somewhere.  Might it not be a good thing for someone to take out space and have the whole thing uploaded as a static web site.  Anything that relates to a forum or reply form could be rendered non-working and just the information made available to the ham community.  Space on a server is relatively cheap these days.

I personally have no interest in the R390 but there are LOT of people who have.  Again, just a thought -- have the former web site reinstated as a static web site with no more changes -- just a place to view the present content

Al

Yer right.  I gotta stop working and retire.  You'ld think I wudda caught on by my age of 73+  ;D