75 M condx Sunday morning SUCK!

[N3DRB The Derb]

as good as it was yesterday, today is totally craptastic @ 1am.    noisy and watered down signals
from anywhere to anywhere near as I can tell. Sometimes having 160 would be nice methinks.

[WD5JKO]

Derb,

    Yea I concur. After hearing about last night I went out into the 20 degree garage and fired up the stuff. Had line noise at S-9, and could barely hear Steve KL7OF calling CQ on 3885. I called CQ a few times, and nothing. I did hear WW9W and KA5HRF on 3880 with fair signals, well OK if I didn't have line noise.

   Now whenever I see my neighbor across the street, he will give me that evil eye since he keeps his computer speakers on 24/7, and I do seem to get into them. Sigh.

Jim
WD5JKO

[K5UJ]

Jim,

Not ur fault his speakers are a p.o.s.  Let him evil eye you to his heart's content.

I got on 75 here just before dawn and condx were excellent.  Super low noise level and humongous short skip signal levels. 


Rob

[W2PFY]

Sunday morning SUCK!

and then you die.

[k4kyv]

Derb, I must have caught your radio disease.  

A couple of weeks ago, my power output dropped and the signal became erratic.  First time I had had any problem with the rig in at least a year. A  little sniffing around led me to the cause, a bad 802 buffer tube.  Fortunately, I have a supply of spares and a new tube quickly got me going.  The  next day, my flaky audio showed up again after a long period of everything working perfectly.  A lot of head scratching and frustration later, I found the problem of the 20 kHz self-oscillation in the 500Ω balanced line amplifier.  I fixed that, and thought I had once and for all taken care of the intermittent problem with that amplifier.  Then about 3 nights ago, the damn thing cut out again, and as usual, started to function normally before I could take any measurements to find where I am losing signal.  That hasn't happened since, but I know the problem is lying low just waiting to show up again at the most inopportune moment.

Friday night, I noticed my modulation was once again flaky.  This time, I couldn't achieve over about 90% positive.  Using the DVM to measure voltages and inserting plate current meters in the circuit, I found that the plate voltage on the 2A3 drivers was sagging from 300 down to 270 or so.  Turned out to be a bad type 83 rectifier tube.  I had a spare in the shack, and replacing that tube fixed the problem without having to go digging in the loft for another tube.

Saturday afternoon, I got on 40m for the first time in weeks, about 2:30 PM, on 7160.  Had a nice QSO with several AM stations in 5-land and 0-land.  The only hassle was one  slopbucket with a strong signal out of 8-land started calling CQ right on top of us.  At first I heard him remark about the "AM broadcast carrier" on frequency, and I ignored him and continued the QSO.  Then he came right on top of the station I was talking to, and went into a tirade that we had a lot of gall to be operating AM in that part of the band instead of staying up on 7290 "where we belong".  Usually I keep my cool during such incidents, but he really pissed me off, and I told him multiple times to "go to hell", and if he didn't like AM in that part of the band, instead of griping he should petition the FCC to open up that vast wasteland between 7100 and 7125 to phone operation in the US, to give us all more room.  He finally got the message and shut up.

I closed down and went out (Saturday evening) and returned about 9 PM.  At first I had planned to check out 40 again, and if it produced nothing, QSY to 75 or 160.  I turned on the rig, and the VFO wouldn't come on.  I got out the DVM and started sniffing around to find that problem, but the DVM was acting very flaky even though I had just used it the night before with the audio driver problem.  Turns out the 9-v battery was crapped out.  Luckily I had another one on hand, got the meter going and managed to trace the problem down to the VFO power supply, which is located at the very bottom of the audio rack. The damn thing was completely dead, even though I measured normal a.c. line voltage feeding it.  I pulled it out of the rack with great difficulty, since I have a sore hip and can't bend down easily to get to it and disconnect all the wires to the barrier strips.  The fuse was OK, so with great discomfort I managed to disconnect all the wiring, remove the power supply from the rack and carry it over to bench where I connected a.c. to it.  Guess what... the goddam thing lit up normally, and nothing I could do would make it fail!  So now I have one more flaky cut-out problem and no clue what is causing it. I guess I'll tinker with the thing some more this afternoon and if I can't find anything, put it back in service knowing it is just waiting to flake out again.

Sometimes, makes me want to take a sledge hammer to the whole #@$%& thing.

[N2DTS]

I was talking with someone about crap outs the other day, maybe it was Stu when his amp went into semi melt down..
Lots more activity in winter, and that likely causes the crap outs.

I find the homebrew stuff is better than anything else, my tape deck was acting nuts (dirty play/record switch inside the unit), the O scope trace jumps in the horizontal mode, at random, it jumps off screen, then back, been over all the switches and solder connections...still does it. the Marantz amp has had switches stop working.

But the 813 rig has been operating for 25 years without problems, including the modulators, the 3x4d32 rig has been trouble free, and both homebrew receivers have not had problems since built, and so far, the 4x813 amp has not had problems.

The 32V3 also keeps running along trouble free.


There, I jinxed myself!

Brett

[N3DRB The Derb]

Don, I feel ya. I just want the stuff to work, ya know? Whats the worst is being off the air and not even able to listen. Thats why I wanna rehab these rxer's next. At least I wont feel cutoff from the homies.

[K5UJ]

Wow, now I'm afraid to fire up the rig.

Don, what did you do to offend the Radio God?  Seriously, your perseverance with all these crap outs is an inspiration.  Glad you wrote about them.  Ditto for you other guys.

Rob

[KC4VWU]

Yep, makes me feel a little better since I thought I was the only one with never ending equipment problems. All screwed up - Situation normal!