R390A Abuse

[flintstone mop]

Are we Amateur radio ops abusing our R390A's?
I have a couple of I.F. strips in for repair at a business called Miltronix. The proprietor, Rick Mish, is an avid radio guy and has devoted his life to military radios.
We talked about 40 min and he has an interesting view of the R390A and what it was designed for.
And if it's not left on 24/7 we are just shortening the life and reliability of this radio.
I almost understand what he is saying. These radios were designed to be in a military HF comm center, probably not air conditioned and run 24/7. Or even stuck in a comm. van or deuce and a half bouncing around and running on a crappy generator.
Turning the R390A off and on is death!
He says it would be ok to run it on today's 120VAC.
He also said when finished using the radio to turn the function knob to CAL and turn on the limiter and BFO switch. and flip the bandswitch once in a while to excersize all of the circuits and functions of the radio.
Are there any comments about this great receiver and how to care for it? He recommends that if someone is not serious about the care of their R390A, then just get a Drake R8A.


I'm not criticizing the man, he is very serious about radios.

COMMENTS??


Thanks
Fred

[WA1GFZ]

If you are really worried about it run the power up using a variac. Yes it was designed for 24 / 7 but why burn all that power. Yes cycle the band switch once in a while to wipe the contacts clean. 
Say you leave your 50 year old radio on all the time and you go out one day and come home to a pile of ashes. are you feeling lucky?

[WQ9E]

I vote with GFZ on this one!

My main floor vintage gear is connected via power strips that are off when the gear is not in use.  The 240 volt line is fed through a shutoff switch.  The basement "shack" has its on breaker panel fed through a shutoff switch.

I would not trust the power switches on older gear and certainly not the older line bypass caps that may not have been replaced.  I picked up an RME-45 parts unit that had gone crispy critters when a line bypass failed and the previous owner said that the finish on the table it was on was starting to smolder when he smelled smoke and went to investigate.  It was turned off but the hot side bypass cap was ahead of the switch.

If I ran any vintage gear 24-7 it would be installed in a fireproof safe.

Rodger WQ9E

[W2XR]

I have dealt with Rick Mish in the past on a limited basis. Like anyone who is passionate about their work, he is also very opinionated. By the same token, he is also extremely knowledgeable about the R-389, R-390, R-390A, and R-391 family of receivers. You usually can't beat experience.

His philosophy is that these receivers should be left on continuously in the interest of long-term stability, reliability, and holding their alignment. For amateur radio use, I personally disagree with him completely with regard to these points. I might suggest otherwise if the receiver were to be used in its intended application; i.e., in a military point-to-point RTTY communications circuit for which it was designed to operate 24/7, and with scheduled maintenance and service.

In stock form, these receivers utilized vacuum tube rectification, and the high voltage turn-on and application is very graceful as a result. It is for this reason that I would not convert my R-390 or R-390A to solid-state HV rectification, for fear of degrading the long-term reliability of the equipment. So turning it on only when you are ready to use it will not degrade the reliability in this regard, any more than virtually any other well designed piece of vacuum tube electronic equipment.

The short and long-term stability of these receivers, considering they use a PTO and are not synthesized, is excellent even from a cold start, and frequency drift for particularly AM use is simply not an issue on any frequency the receiver is tuned to.

Lastly, the alignment of any receiver is subject to change over time, and the greater the operating hours the unit has accrued, the greater the drift of components, tube degradation due to use, etc. So I guess you could assume that if the receiver is left on 24/7, you are no doubt accelerating the intervals between alignment.

Consider too the issue of life-cycle cost. The R-390 pulls a lot of power, something on the order of 220 watts. If left on 24/7, you could calculate the electric power usage say for a one year (8736 hours) period of operation. Balance that against the cost of estimated repairs and related replacement parts for the receiver due to one year of continous operation. As a result, my guess is that you'll turn the receiver on only when you wish to use it.

I don't know anyone who leaves their R-390/A on 24/7, even those who have had their receivers serviced by Mish or Chuck Rippel, etc.

73,

Bruce

[WA3VJB]

Mish is in the business of repairs and restoration. What he said may have been true when the radios were new, but the military never factored component failure across the time span we now face.

Leaving on any 40+ year old gear for extended, unattended time is a recipe for disaster for the equipment and the home where it's located. The longer the time the greater the risk, as a statistical matter.

Mine may stay on for the weekend, and I'm around if not actually in the room.

In the years I've been an owner, the only significant stress from turning the R390(A) on and off is to the iron filament ballast tube.  I've swapped mine out for a 12BY7 filament.  

[Opcom]

I believe Mish in regards to leaving them on. However I also believe that a soft start is good and that there is risk in leaving one on unless it has been completely rebuilt. I also note that I had no trouble for years, by using the radio every saturday for a few hours. I was thinking his opinion is partly for the purpose of maintaining a constant temperature in the radio's delicate coils etc.
I would have sent the radio to Mish to repair, but my friend Francesco Ledda offered to do it, and so how could I refuse? He knows them quite well, has the high tech test gear, and has an amazing collection of mil gear himself. When I got it back, minimum detectable signal (a 1KHz tone modulated AM signal) was -134dBm with the bandswitch in the 2KHz position, and I find this to be very good, at least for my purposes.
Anyway, Rick Mish is supposed to the the expert on them and I don't want to second guess. What was the reason for leaving them on?

[Bill, KD0HG]

If one is going to leave the receiver on 24x7, I'd turn off the PTO heater. No point to baking the poor thing and drying out its lube.

Yes, the AC power microswitch in the 390A is a weak point. I use an external switch on a common power strip.

[k4kyv]

I used to keep my VFO, 75A-4 and outboard receiver monitor amp running 24/7.  I noticed short tube life, having to replace tubes more frequently than I thought I ought to.  6V6's in the monitor amp lasted less than a year before they would begin to test weak in the TV7/DU, even though all voltages were very conservative.  The VFO oscillator tube would go spastic every year or two. Whenever I would test the tubes in the receiver, about a third of them would read weak, even though I had replaced the weak ones a year or so earlier.  Surely, these tubes should be lasting longer than that.

So I started shutting everything down overnight.  So far, I haven't noticed premature tube failures. We'll see in a couple of years if it really is a trend.

I don't worry about starting a fire.  All the equipment is in metal cabinets or mounted in a metal rack, and everything is properly fused.  The place could get stunk up with burnt transformer tar though.

One warning in the R-390A manual is that it will shorten the life of some tubes to leave the filaments on and silence the receiver for long periods by switching it to the stand-by mode.

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

All the R-390s I ever saw in USG service were left on 24/7.

[N3DRB The Derb]

dont leave yer dx 100's on unattended. Ask me how I no dat. 

[Ed/KB1HYS]

I only power on when I'm at the position.  I will leave things on for short breaks etc. but I use a master kill switch too.  I worry more about the constant thermal cycles more than anything else but leaving things on is a recipe for disaster and needless electrical bills.

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

Nolan Lee, a former member of the R-390 list from down in Louisiana proved out the gov't assessment after leaving one of his rebuilt A models online for over a year back in the mid 90s. He ended up taking it down when a tube crapped out and reported his findings to the group - a few weak tubes.

But as mentioned, the government had a whole different reasoning involved, and that reasoning included a bottomless pocketbook and endless spares. They were yanked out of service regularly for PM and certain items were changed at that point whether they were weak, bad, or working fine.

Two big issues of consideration for the ham user would be avoiding the Standby position which lets the B+ soar, and making sure the crystal ovens are disconnected. Don't just trust those switches. Run a whisper fan for additional cooling if it bothers you but leave the rectifier tubes in there for a true 'soft start'. And let it warm up for a while when you want to use it. Wonderful receivers to use.

On the bright side, they do stabilize considerably faster than an old Super Pro.  

[W3GMS]

Does anyone know what happened to Chuck Rippel?  He was very involved in restoring the 390's.  I use to work him on 160 but have not heard him in several years now.  I checked on the QRZ data base but could not find his call listed.  When I last worked him I believe he just finished restoring a Collins 20V2 or 3.
Joe, W3GMS 

[W2XR]

Does anyone know what happened to Chuck Rippel?  He was very involved in restoring the 390's.  I use to work him on 160 but have not heard him in several years now.  I checked on the QRZ data base but could not find his call listed.  When I last worked him I believe he just finished restoring a Collins 20V2 or 3.
Joe, W3GMS 

Hi Joe,

I hope that you & Martha are doing well!

When Chuck was going through my R-390A back in late 2007, I contacted him on his cellphone. I don't know if the following number is still current, but it is worth a shot:

757-615-7234.

I recall him mentioning a desire to leave the Chesapeake, VA area and move to Tennessee, but I have no idea if anything ever came of it.

Good luck!

73,

Bruce

[flintstone mop]

Rick Mish told me that there are comm centers, that the gummint maintains, on the East Coast and West Coast with these old servants still in service, just in case of an EMP event.
You can't hurt tubes.

And good advice about NOT using the STANDBY mode.

I think Chuck Ripple burned out on the servicing part of his life and wanted to get out of reparing radios.
Phred

[The Slab Bacon]

dont leave yer dx 100's on unattended. Ask me how I no dat. 

                             .............................................

[W3GMS]

Thanks Bruce and Fred for the information concerning Chuck.  I forgot his call but when I did a name search on QRZ I got nothing found as a reply.  He was the touted "geru" for many years on the 390's and I was just curious what happened to him.  I am not looking for anyone to work on my 390's around here. 
Joe, W3GMS

[N3DRB The Derb]

I think Chuck Ripple burned out on the servicing part of his life and wanted to get out of reparing radios.

peeeps think that doing what you love as a hobby for work would be great. It can be, but's way too easy to get fried on it. By the time Golden Age Radio closed down, I really didn't care if I ever saw the guts of another one.

If you treat it like a real part time job, working 5 or 6 hours a day  and give yourself a lot of breathing room doing other things, you can last a while.

If you take in too much you wind up hating it. Chuck fell into the trap and it chewed him up. Howard HM is on that treadmill too. I keep wondering how much longer he'll keep doing his thing. at one point a while ago he told me he was just under 200 radios behind. he cant get on the air anymore - every-time he does, someone gets in his face about their radio and why is it taking so long?

sometimes I think about hanging out a shingle to supplement my disability income, as they allow you to make 700 bux a month at a home business without losing your basic benefit. But I'm not sure my mad skillz are good enough anymore.

[WA3VJB]

WA4HHG, still good and still listed to where he's lived for years.

That's where he has or had his 20V2 up and running on 160M.  
For a while he was trying to sell the transmitter but no takers at the price.

I've known Chuck since 1972 or so when his family moved to my neighborhood from Lorain, Ohio. (name is spelled RIPPEL)   His dad had one of the first DATSUN dealerships in the area, and I got some cool rides in the 240Z and the little 1200 that he would bring home.  I still have a 1969 Datsun convertible his old man's place supported with parts / service.

Chuck in recent years was spending a lot of time deployed with the US Coast Guard Reserve, activated for tours in the Persian Gulf.  His R390A service and restoration business was being handled by an understudy, who, himself, wanted to limit the amount of work accepted so he could maintain quality control.

His website has not been updated in more than a year -- not a good sign.

http://r390a.com/Services.htm

Does anyone know what happened to Chuck Rippel?  He was very involved in restoring the 390's.  I use to work him on 160 but have not heard him in several years now.  I checked on the QRZ data base but could not find his call listed.  When I last worked him I believe he just finished restoring a Collins 20V2 or 3.
Joe, W3GMS  

[W3GMS]

Thanks Paul for the information on Chuck.  Now I know why I could not find him on QRZ since the spelling that someone gave me was wrong.  Well I am glad he is alive and well and hopefully we will hear him back on 160 some day.  He did do prestine work on the 390's.
Joe, W3GMS