Ranger II Grid Current

[WA3MJY]

I recently purchased a Johnson Ranger II. The rig was rather dirty, but cleaned up rather nicely. I have replaced all of the tubes and electrolytic capacitors. The only problem I have is that I can't get any grid current on 80 or 10 meters. When using the VFO (Ten meters works fine using a cyrstal). The rig works nice on the other bands. I realize this is a very old piece of equipment and there probably are not very many still in use, but I was wondering if anyone else may have experienced this problem and what was the solution

[WQ9E]

Since this could be a VFO problem I would start by making sure that the 18K dropping resistor inside the VFO has been changed to a higher wattage rating unit. The original one is too small and tends to cook itself while going up in value which results in reduced VFO output and instability followed by baking bakelite.

While you are inside the VFO go ahead an replace the 6AU6 just so you won't have to open it up again.

A weak V-14 (keyer tube) could cause the problem you are seeing so try subbing for that if the VFO itself isn't the issue.

Since it does work OK on crystal, then the two 6CL6 buffer/multiplier stages are working somewhat normally.  I assume you are using a 7 mhz rock for your 10 meter testing; when you use the crystal versus the VFO on 40 meters how much difference is there in the drive control for the two sources to get the proper grid drive?  Also, how far do you have to advance the drive control on 15 meters with the VFO to get proper current?  If one of the 6CL6 tubes is weak that might be the issue so substitute if you have a spare; otherwise switch V3 and V4 and see if/how the symptoms change.

Nothing jumps out at me since your rig works on 160 and it uses the same VFO frequency output for 80 so one would expect it would also work there.  The higher bands use the multiplied output from the 40 meter VFO range so if the VFO works on 20 and 15 then it should also work on 10.