Todd, did Frank pay you for this glowing writeup or did he do that KWM-380 repair on the cheap for you? LOL
Nah, Frank doesn't strike me as the the 'publicity' type. He enjoys the newer stuff and the challenge of teensie parts. I have no idea of the going rate for such things, but I feel he treated me
very well with respect to time and talent spent vs. cost to me. A
CCA-approved sticker would've likely cost me mucho more and gained me nothing.
It was just a fun trip, a chance to spend time with radio friends, and an excuse to move away from the recent "Ham Radio is dying/you suck/we suck/I hate you" discussions of late. Not that it'll take, mind you.
And come to think of it, what the devil do you want with a KWM-380 to begin with!? You better watch out fooling with that modern SS stuff from Collins, Racal and Cubic, it could ruin your vintage gear reputation!
Well, it's like this. For years I've been needled by radio friends for not having any 'modern gear' beyond a coupla 2m CBs and the Ickom O2ATalkie. Dead bugs, 3-legged fuses, all that. I didn't want a ricebox, and never figured I could afford the technologically-outdated grand daddy of the super rigs, the 380. So my argument was I'd only get this particular radio. As luck would have it, a friend had a broken one (translation: affordable) available along with a Alpha PA-77 and some other goodies. Long story short: I picked up the whole pile, and the 380 sat here dead for about 5 years. Not dead, I guess - it could say 'beep-beep-beep' just fine. But the conversation gets old pretty fast.
Now it's fixed, works fab, and it's going to get peddled to pay my ever-increasing property taxes and heating costs to stay in the New Vermont for another winter. So the bills will be paid and my reputation as the Fool With Only Old Gear, saved. Good deal, eh?
Yea, and he appreciates a good jar of pickled eggplant as well!!
We didn't go there!! It was a 2+ hour ride home, yanno?
One thing about fixing modern radios I learned last night is not share the parts that were removed. 1 mica cap and two TO220 transistors with a pair of signal diodes. I could Tell Todd was bummed to see the few parts that kept off the air.
I are now a KWM380 spert.
The KWM380 with all the mods would be a cool radio to own even if it doesn't TX am. It receives AM fine. They don't build then like that in Japan.
I was really dismayed that the entire bag of bad parts wasn't even equivalent to the size of a puny 6AL5! Or put another way - pieces I can barely see. I can get my mitts around a bad tube and yank it out, stuff another one in. Problem fixed. This solid state stuff is witchcraft. Pure evil, I tell ya.
So the dilemma now is getting it sold before I decide to get the Kiron memory board and figure out a way to keep it. It's already loaded with all the "desirable" filters and has the 8kc LC network in place of the 6kc AM filter, plus the WARC bands SB, matching desk mic, service manual, and whatever else. Frank even did the last SB to it.
The crystal ball is showing some weekend slopbucket on the horizon....
