Wait a minute (for) Mr. Postman
So, I straightened, and I waited. 2:00 came, as did 2:30. When Barb called at 2:45 to see when I was coming back to her mom's to spend more time with the family, I said that if the mailman didn't show up by 3:00, I'd head out.
At 3:05, I pulled out of the driveway. A half mile down the road, I passed two mail carriers; I recognized one of them as our sometimes-Saturday-substitute carrier, so I turned around. When I caught up with them, they were both pulled over in a driveway and it looked like they were transferring mail from one vehicle to another. So, I went back home and waited about 10 minutes. Still no mailman. So, I headed back south again - only to pass my mailman headed toward my house. So, I turned around again, passed him just south of my house, and pulled in the driveway. I met him at the road and said "I think you have something really heavy for me." He laughed and pulled in the driveway behind me. In his back seat was a huge cardboard box, marked "MISC TELCO EQUIP".
I picked it up, which gave me my very first impression of this radio:
It's heavy.
I think it weighs close to 40 pounds.
I put it in the back of the van and headed off to my mother-in-law's house.
The Unboxing
Later that night, back home, I unboxed it. It was wrapped in a towel (!) and packed in an odd assortment of leftover styrofoam pieces from who-knows-what-other-merchandise. For its odd packing, it was surprisingly well protected. I've saved the box and packing in case I need to return the radio.
I set it on my desk and looked it over. Apart from the missing side door (which covers 5 adjustment pots) and a little touch-up paint between two switches on the front panel, it's exceptionally clean and spotless. So, what did I do with it first?
I took off the top cover. Eight snug but easy-to-remove screws later, and then I just had to unplug the speaker (which is part of the cover ). The insides are as spotless as the outsides.
My second impression: Although I'm like able to adjust this radio (due to the various tunable coils and pots and such), I seriously doubt my ability to work on this radio. I've never seen so many wires and solder connections (and even wire-wrapped connections) in one place before - not to mention so many discrete resistors and capacitors and transistors and such.
I flipped some switches and spun some knobs on the front.
My third impression: Some of these knobs take some torque to turn. Specifically, the top three knobs on the right (labeled "Load", "Plate", and "Drive") require surprising effort to turn. They are connected to shafts (seen in the lower right part of the picture above) that extend into the high-voltage transmitter section (under the cover that, oddly enough, says "DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE"). The rightmost "Drive" knob also uses chain linkages to turn three variable capacitors in the front half of the radio. The VFO wheel (the large knob in the middle of the front of the radio), however, turns with almost zero effort, while still giving just barely enough resistance so that it stops turning when you let go of it.
I flipped through the manual to identify the 5 separate circuit boards I could see. The manual showed me that there are at least 5 more boards visible from the bottom of the radio. Sometime, I'll take the bottom cover off and look in there as well.
I hooked the speaker back up and replaced the top cover. I then located the power cord:
It's got this monstrous 12-pin jack-plug-thing that hooks into the back of the radio. And it has an ungrounded plug (the rig is designed to be hooked directly to ground through a screw on the back). This 12-pin jack-plug-thing can also be wired for 13.8 volts DC, so I could hook this to my Astron 35 AMP power supply instead of plugging it into the wall.
Please Don't Arc
So, I plugged it in. I also plugged in the only antenna I had available in the house with a PL-259 connector on it - my Comet dual-band magmount. I made sure that the Send/Receive switch on the front was on "Receive" (I didn't want to load up the transmitter on accident!), turned down the "AF Gain" (audio volume), and turned it on.
My fourth impression: It is noisy. Lots of hiss. I'm used to FM repeaters, which sound almost as good as FM radio stations (as Steely Dan would say, "No static at all"). But the unprocessed world of CW and sideband is noisy. I discovered that I could turn down the RF gain, which would lower the noise and help the signals stand out as I turned up the volume.
I pulled out my handy ARRL Ham Bands chart so I could figure out where to tune. I started at the low end of the 20-meter band with the mode switch set to CW, and I spun the frequency knob.
My fifth impression: The narrow CW filter installed in this radio is incredibly helpful. With its 500 Hz passband, I could easily tune between two adjacent CW signals with just a slight move of the wheel. It makes it very easy to pick just one signal out of a crowd. This, along with judicious use of the "RF Gain" vs "AF Gain" controls (along with a decent pair of headphones) should hopefully get me into some quality CW listening pretty quickly.
My sixth impression: I can still recognize "CQ" in Morse Code; I still can't recognize much else. My code needs much more work.
I could not find any SSB traffic at all; at this point, I blame the antenna. I thought that the radio might have some dirty parts related to the "Drive" shaft, because I could get the signal to get better if tapped or pushed on the knob. I even took the radio apart again and studied it, messing with with the knob with the power on. There was a tiny bit (less than 1/2mm) of front-to-back play in the shaft. I scratched my head and started to worry a bit that something was seriously amiss. Then, I remembered the cardinal axiom of computer networking, and it seemed to apply here: "Rules 1, 3, 6, and 10: Check Your Cables!" I wiggled the antenna coax at its plug in the back of the radio - and I found my bad connection. It seems that, as I was pushing on the drive knob, I was actually pushing the whole radio and wiggling the antenna connection. Sounds like this antenna needs a new PL-259 plug in any case!
I need a real antenna for this radio. But, first, I need to test out this radio (both in receive and transmit, and on several different bands) - which I currently cannot do from home.
That story is shortly to be written. :)
73 to all! - K9MJA
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