Bathroom Floor Repair

This is not a post about radio.  Rather, it's a post about what has occupied much of the past three weekends for me.

Over the last couple years, our bathroom developed a "soft spot" in the floor, right where you walk in.  It was right in the middle of the doorway, and just over the threshold - so it was quite noticeable whenever you walked in or out.  My wife wisely said "you should really fix that".

My initial suspicion was that the subfloor was just worn out.  In a previous life, this bathroom was an outdoor porch.  When we remodeled it 19 years ago, I didn't replace the subfloor (which my wife maintains was a mistake - she's probably right).  So, I thought I'd cut out a chunk of the subfloor and put in a replacement and move on.

Weekend #1

I started by tapping on the floor to locate the floor joists, and then cutting a hole ...

No, that's not true.  I started by making a trip to Sears to buy a couple saws.  I haven't had a circular saw for a few years, and I needed a table saw both to make nice straight cuts on OSB and luan (and for lots of upcoming trim work).  So, that came first, on a Saturday morning.  I also stopped at Lowe's and bought a piece of 3/4" OSB and a piece of 1/4" luan.  I had them cut both pieces in half, so I had two 4x4 pieces of each.

So.  I started by tapping on the floor to locate the floor joists, and then cutting a hole between them (about 14 x 16) with my newly-acquired circular saw.

There's a hole in the floor!

The first thing I noticed was that the subfloor was unexpectedly solid.  And rather recent looking - as it "it's not the 50-year-old wood that I was expecting to find".

No going back now.

So, now that I had located the floor joists, I expanded my hole by cutting 1" deep along the middle of the floor joists, and most of the way back to the door.  I noticed that there was a slight gap between the joists and the floor, and my first thought was "SHIMS!!"

But then, I wondered why the shims were needed.  As I stood on the floor and felt it move a little, I took a closer look at the floor joists.

Looks pretty OK from this angle.

Uh oh - that looks suspicious.

And that looks even more suspicious!

That's right - both of these floor joists had been severed and then supported with only a 2x4 underneath them.  The ends of the 2x4 are well supported atop the foundation on both side.  But, the 2x4 is lying on its side, with nothing supporting the middle of it.  Of course it has sagged a bit over time.  Sigh.

This was quite disheartening, and plenty enough a Saturday.  I poked around a bit more on Sunday, trying to see how I could improve things.  While I stared at the woodwork and considered my options, my wife looked up a number of Youtube videos.  None of them gave me the answer I needed, but it turned out that I was able to use bits of a few videos during the following weekend.

Over the following week, I talked to a few men at church, and got some ideas.  I also talked with my best friend (who used a week of his vacation to help me remodel the bathroom 19 years ago). Through this, I gathered a number of ideas.  Coupled with some YouTube hints, it was time to attack the fix.

Weekend #2

The next weekend's work on the floor started on my birthday, right after my radio died.

My approach was going to be:

• Remove the stubs of floor joist still attached to the beam (hooray for owning a reciprocating saw)
• Sister a new length of floor joist next to each of the severed joists, attached with carriage bolts
• Use joist hangers to attach the new sistered joists to the beam under the doorway
• Cut new piece of OSB to fit
• Cut new piece of luan to fit
• Use wood putty to fill any cracks and voids
• Finish installing the remainder of the vinyl tile to match the rest of the bathroom

I had stopped at Menards earlier in the week to purchase joist hangers and bolts - and some construction adhesive to keep adjoining pieces of wood from rubbing together and squeaking.  So, I was ready to go!

Fixing the joists

First, I found a spare 2x8 in the garage and cut it in half, figuring that this would be enough support for what I was trying to accomplish.

I used a Sawz-All reciprocating saw to cut through the nails between the severed joist stubs and the beam they were attached to.  For some reason, I thought this would be really hard - I think it took less than a minute in total.  That's OK; most of the rest of the job ran consistently over estimate.

Then:  I needed to make sure that the original floor joist was at the right height so that the floor would be solid and level.  This is where YouTube came in handy.  I had watched a video where a guy had used his automobile jack to hold a floor joist in place.   So, I got a piece of OSB to place the jack on, and then I jacked up the first of the old joists until it was at the right height.

Then, I measured the vertical space for the new floor joist.  It turns out I needed to rip 1/2" off of the length of it and notch out a corner to fit under the original door sill.  I also drilled four 3/8" holes through it, which is where the carriage bolts would be placed:

The first of the support joists

With much trial and error, I placed the joist into place and got it also up on the jack so that it was tight.

Trial fit of the first joist

When I made sure I had the fit right, I pulled it back out, put the joist hanger into place, replaced the joist, and then attached the joist hanger to the beam and to the joist.  In the picture below, you can see why I quickly switched from nails to deck screws.

Joist hanger in place

A quick note about the joist hangers.  I wasn't sure what I'd need when I went to the Menards, so I bought a pair of joist hangers that could be used for anything from 2x6 to 2x12.  They look like this:

My, what big ears you have!
(Picture credit: Menards.com, SKU 227-1549)

It turns out that I needed close to 2x6 rather than 2x12.   It also turns out that there was a slight gap between the old door sill and the beam beneath it.  So, after measuring the appropriate length, I bent the "ears" and slid them between the sill and the beam.  Unfortunately, they were too long - so out came the tin snips.  I cut the ears so that only about 1-1/2" was sticking out past the bend.  This turned out to be quite handy, as the joist hangers were then mostly self-supporting until they were actually fastened to the wood.

Next, I moved the jack to the other end of the new joist, and jacked it up tight against the floor.  Then I used the handy Milwaukee heavy-duty right-angle drill to finish the bolt holes, drilling through original joist by starting in the 4 holes that I drilled in the new joist.  I then started putting bolts in.

At this point, I realized that I bought bolts that were too short.  Apparently 3-1/2" bolts aren't long enough to attach two floor joists together.  Sigh.  So, I had to run to the local hardware store for some 4" bolts.  By the way, they were at least three times as expensive as the bolts I got at Menards - but it was an hour less of driving.

But, then, I had one of the two floor joists installed!  It was certainly fun trying to tighten the nuts onto these bolts, especially the ones farthest from the door where my arms barely reached through the hole.  It was also fun trying to finish drilling these holes, for the same reason.  (There is a crawl space under the bathroom, but it's not the roomiest of workspaces - I avoid it whenever possible.)

The next joist repair went a little quicker - partly because I had a better idea of what I needed to so, and partly because I took the opportunity to employ a second jack so that I could support both ends of the work at the same time.  Glad we have two vehicles!

The second floor joist installed, showing one of the bolts.

OSB subfloor

Next, it was on to the replacing the flooring.  My wife was studying the flooring that was installed atop the old door sill, and suggested that I remove that and put in one piece of subfloor to cover all of it.  As usual, she was right, so that's what I did.

Old flooring removed from atop the original door sill.

At this point, I'll stop and note that things started to make more sense here.  This appears to be an original door sill for an door leading outside to the porch.  I will also note that this door sill is sloped slightly (so that rain hitting it would run away from the house, apparently).  That slope would make the next step very interesting.

First, I measured the opening, marked it off on a piece of OSB, and then broke out the table saw.  I had bought a plywood blade for it (in addition to the ripping blade that it came with), so I installed that blade.  My son-in-law helped me guide the OSB through the saw, including cutting the inside corners.  Boy, I like this saw.

Next, I needed to bevel the underside of the OSB over where the door sill is.  "Bevel."  Hmm.  Hey, my table saw supports beveled cuts!  So, I did some measuring and figuring, and then I raised the saw blade all the way up, beveled it at about 4 degrees, and fed a test piece of OSB through on edge to bevel it away.  After a couple tests, my son-in-law helped me guide the "real" piece of OSB through the saw to bevel it.

I knew that I'd need to do some sanding as well, because the saw blade only sticks up about 3", whereas I needed to bevel about 4-1/2" of wood.

So, I got out the belt sander with its old mostly-worn belt - and I sanded and sanded.  And sanded.  I didn't get particularly far.

My wife was headed to the mall with her mom later in the week, so I had her pick up some new sanding belts at Sears.  I was ready to finish the floor during the next weekend!

Weekend #3

So, I sanded and sanded...  And performed test fits.  And sanded some more.  And more test fits.  The new 80-grit sanding belt really helped - I spent only about an hour trying to make this board fit.  In the end, this is what I ended up with:

The piece of beveled OSB.

A close-up of the beveled section.

As I was considering installing it, my wife stood on the old door sill - and said "hey, this thing rocks."  Sure enough, I watched it rock along its long axis as she moved her weight back and forth on it.  I cut a piece of 2x6 to use as a support, got the jack back out, jacked up the block underneath the door sill, and then screwed the block to the beam:

Door (sill) stopper.

I also installed a similar block in the space to the left, under the old floor - I jacked it up and screwed it in blind.  And, I put about a dozen deck screws in the top of the sill, securing it to the beam.

Then, I put the OSB into place - after tracing its shape onto a piece of luan.  I ran a few beads of glue on the sill and the joists to hopefully prevent future squeaking.  Then, a dozen or more deck screws and it is there to stay.

Floor!

Luan

Next, it was time for the luan.  Since I had traced the shape of the OSB onto the luan, it was fairly easy to cut out using my RotoZip with its cutting wheel attachment.  The first piece was a little too small, so I cut out a second piece that was a little larger.  I laid it in place and felt around the edges to check how close I was on the depth.

It turned out that two of the edges were a little low - and the end farthest from the door was a little more than 1/16" too low.  So, I shimmed that end up with layers of cardstock, gently ranging from 1 sheet to about 13 sheets thick.  You can see the white cardstock peeking out at the edges of the luan here:

Luan getting ready to be nailed down.

Wood Putty

After another trip to the hardware store to buy underlayment nails, I fastened the luan to the floor.  I checked the depths again, and a couple edges were a little low after being nailed down - so I built them up with some wood putty.  I also filled in all the cracks with putty so that the floor didn't have any gaps in it.

First application of wood putty

Later that night (Sunday), I sanded the putty and then filled in a few voids, leaving it for its last sanding on Monday.

Tile

Most of the bathroom has already been covered with 12" square adhesive-backed vinyl tile; this was the last bit to complete.

So, Monday night, I did the last sanding on the wood putty.  Then, I cleaned the floor three times to make sure it didn't have any dust or dirt on it.  Next, I quickly laid down the 5 tiles that didn't have to be cut.  Afterwards, I cut and placed the two pieces in the middle of the doorway edge, the larger of the two pieces next to the bathtub, and the piece that fit around the corner between the bathtub and the door.  Then, I did some finagling with a paper template to get a rough outline of the piece that had to fit around the left side of the door frame (since there wasn't any clearance to slide the tile under it).  After some trial and error (and a good deal of whittling), I got that piece in place - as well as the final piece at the corner of the bathtub.

I couldn't complete the floor, though, because there was a void in the original floor behind the door.  I filled that with wood putty and left it for the next night.

The end results of Monday night are shown in this picture - you can see a tiny bit of wood putty peeking out from the door at the bottom right of the picture:

Almost done!!

So, Tuesday night, I sanded the last bit of the wood putty.  Then I cleaned the floor again, quickly cut and placed two pieces of tile ...

... and then had to figure out how to make the complicated cuts on the last tile.  Again, at the other side of the door frame, there was no room to slide the tile underneath the frame.  If I wanted it to look good, I was going to have to cut the tile to fit.

I taped a piece of paper to the floor, and then used a 12" strip of cut tile as a guide to transfer the contours of the wall and the door frame onto the piece of paper.  I then cut out the paper to make a template:

Kinda looks like a state.  Massachusetts?

I flipped this paper over, taped it to a piece of tile, traced it with a pencil, and then cut and whittled it out piece by piece.  I did about a dozen "test fit and re-whittle" iterations until the piece looked like this:

I'm surprised I survived the whittling session with zero blood loss.

Here are a couple pictures of the final result in that corner.

Baseboard will cover up that dent in the wall there. 

The kitchen floor is a future project. :)

And the end result:

The floor is done!!

What's next?

The floor is done!  Well, except for some grout (in the whole bathroom).  And some baseboard trim.  And finishing painting the walls around the bathtub.   And figuring out something to do with the ceiling.  

Epilogue: Tool Inventory

The following tools were used in this project, pretty much in this order:

• Craftsman circular saw (for cutting into the floor)
• Tape Measure
• Pencil
• Standard screwdriver (mainly for prying)
• Claw hammer 
• DeWalt cordless drill and square drive bit (for deck screws)
• Milwaukee Sawz-All reciprocating saw (for cutting through nails)
• Needle-nose pliers (for pulling old luan staples)
• Two chisels (for removing stubborn bits of wood that the saws couldn't reach)
• DeWalt portable 10" table saw (for cutting/ripping 2x8s and cutting OSB)
• Milwaukee Heavy Duty Right-Angle Drill (for drilling 3/8" holes through joists)
• Two Toyota Sienna scissor jacks (from two Toyota Siennas, of course)
• Pliers and Tin Snips (for bending and cutting the joist hangers)
• Black&Decker adjustable-grip clamps (to hold the floor joists together)
• Craftsman ratchet with 9/16" socket, and Craftsman 9/16" box end wrench (for tightening the carriage bolts holding the floor joists together)
• Craftsman belt sander (for sanding the beveled edge of the OSB)
• Caulking gun (for applying the glue between the joists and the OSB)
• RotoZip with X-Wheel attachment and wood-cutting wheel (for cutting luan)
• 4" plastic putty knife (for applying wood putty)
• Hand sanding block (for sanding the wood putty)
• Stanley utility knife (for cutting the tile)
• 4 foot level (used as a straightedge when cutting the tile)

Thankfully, I already owned all of these tools - with the exception of the aforementioned circular saw and table saw.

Dead Radio, and a Delay

So, Eight Months Have Passed...

... when we last spoke, I had just hung and tested a W4KGH end-fed antenna.  Well, I had tested it on receive, anyway.

The End-Fed Antenna

This antenna proved to be quite useful.  Even though it is hanging along a SW/NE axis, I still have had pretty good coverage with it.  Its quieter nature has really helped me make a number of contacts.  I was even able to make 4 contacts on 80 meters with it during the North American QSO Party just a couple weeks after my last post.

In fact, I have made 277 contacts since I last posted on this blog - 123 of them were during the ARRL DX SSB contest a month ago.  I even made a contact on 20 meters to New Zealand - by far my farthest contact.  I've had DX contacts and ragchews; I've gotten reacquainted with a couple old friends via the MidCARS net on 7.258.

But... I didn't make the ZL contact on the end-fed antenna.   I actually made that on my original 40-meter dipole.  And there's a reason for that.

You see, the combination of the end-fed antenna and my radio have started to have indigestion on 20 meters.  When I even tap the mic, it starts to feed back within the radio, pegging the ALC meter and drowning out my audio.  I'm not sure why this is - could be poor grounding, could be some water or a loose connection in the antenna / feedline, could be a problem starting to appear with the radio.  In any case, I started avoiding 20 meters with the end-fed antenna in about January.

But that hasn't stopped me from making 29 contacts on 20 meters with the dipole - mostly during contests.

The CW

(The mode, not the TV network!)

I bought a Heathkit HD-1410 Electronic Keyer at a local hamfest for $25 (cheaper than eBay!) without even plugging it in.  When I got it home, I took it apart and looked it over.  Someone has added a switch to it in order to bypass a diode or two; I haven't yet figured out what effect this mod has.  I plugged it in, and played with it for a few minutes, getting used to the iambic paddles.  It is a little "clicky" but I like the feel of it.

So - I cobbled together a RCA-to-phono cable to hook this keyer to my radio.  And then I read the CW section of the radio manual (as I've admittedly never worked CW before).  Once I understood how to set the various switches (CW mode, VOX on, SEND on, appropriate VOX delay for semi-breakin operation) and verified that the keyer would actually key up the transmitter, I sent my first-ever CW transmission on March 14th:

A full 100 watts out, on 20 meters (on the dipole, of course).

Time to dig deeper into learning Morse Code!

The Wind

I have a habit of looking up into the trees every couple days to make sure my antennae are still in the air.  Well, on March 23rd (two days before my birthday), I couldn't find my end-fed antenna in the air.  I found it on the ground:

The problem here is that the only physical connection to the matching transformer was the end of the wire and a wingnut.  I'm going to solder a ring terminal onto the end of this wire (or just solder it into a loop) and re-hang it.

But, you may ask - "Hey Mike, why haven't you done that yet?"

Well, there are two reasons.

Reason #1:

Dead TS-520

On Friday, March 25th (my birthday), my company gave us the afternoon of Good Friday off.  I got a late start, so I worked until about 2 PM.  I had a nice contact with CN2CO (Dimitri) in Morocco and another one with M0TAZ (Dave) in England on 15 meters (which is by far my favorite band), and then had about a 15-minute conversation with VE7MTW (John) in British Columbia.  This was my third contact with John; he was my first contact outside of the U.S. back in November 2014 (and my 9th HF contact overall).  As we were finishing up, I had made my final transmission and I was listening to his final transmission.

And I noticed that he was getting quieter and quieter.  "Well, the band is going away" I thought; I was facing away from the radio, logging our QSO on the computer.   But then I realized that the noise was also getting quieter and quieter.  So, I looked back over to the radio.

Over the next five seconds, I noticed the panel lights getting dimmer and dimmer, until the radio just shut off.

I power-cycled it, to no avail.

And then I smelled "hot".  Not "let the magic smoke out", but "hot dust and/or metal".  I felt the top of the radio near the finals - and it was, well, quite warm.

I waited about 5 minutes for it to cool off, and power-cycled it again.  Nothing.

Time to take it apart - so I did.  And, for the first time, I removed the piece of metal (conspicuously marked DANGER - HIGH VOLTAGE) covering the transmitter tubes.

The first thing I noticed was that the tubes looked rather "used":

Are these S2001s or 6146Bs? Regardless, are they supposed to look like this?

I've looked at Google Images for pictures of these tubes - and they don't tend to have these V-shaped dark deposits on the interior.  I don't know if this means the tubes are gone, or not.

But, in any case, the radio is dead.  So, I pulled the AC fuse to check it.  It's burned out.

After talking with a couple elmer friends (including one that I just met today who used to own and operate a TS-820), it sounds like the power supply filter capacitors might have gone bad.   After almost 40 years of service, a complete re-capping is probably in order, so today I ordered a re-capping kit from HybridRestore.  They say it will take me 4-6 hours to replace the 40+ capacitors (including the high-voltage caps for the finals) - I imagine it will take me longer than that.

In the meantime, I have a spare power cord plug that I will wire up for 13.8VDC (once I get the appropriate wire and fuse holder), and then hook the radio to my 35A Astron power supply (not a switching supply, but rather one of those with a big 20 pound transformer in it).  Maybe it's just the AC power supply that has gone bad; this is a good way to test that theory.

Other possibilities include the plate resistors being shot; I purchased a finals resistor kit along with the recap kit, so I'll go ahead and replace those as well.

When I get around to it, that is.

"What's keeping you?!" you ask.  Well, that's a good question.

And that's Reason #2.  Which is a story for a followup blog post, which will be coming shortly!  (And, by shortly, I mean in the next day or two.  Not eight months from now!)

In The Meantime...

I put the covers back on the TS-520 (primarily to keep most of the cat hair out of it, as I have two cats who frequent the desk which serves as my shack).

I've been spending more time on VHF, meeting new friends on the local repeaters.  I think I've talked to 6 new people in the last two or three weeks.

I helped the Clay County ARES group build out their new emergency AuxComm station at the local hospital - here are a couple pictures from our antenna cable installation work party last month:

Kevin (K9HX) working on an antenna cable

Jim (K9SVJ), Gary (W9EEU) and Kevin (K9HX)

In fact, since I had a handheld radio (and the appropriate antenna connector) handy, they let me make the first-ever contact as N9CCA (where CCA is "Clay County Auxcomm") from the new station.  Pretty cool!

I've been looking into putting up a DTV antenna and a collinear ADS-B antenna to improve my ADS-B reception for my FlightAware ADS-B feeder.  I also want to add UHF elements to my homemade VHF antenna, including adding a simple diplexer (see Page 3 of this PDF) so that I can use one antenna with my dual-band radios.

I also want to add an RF choke (either a toroid choke or an ugly balun) to my 40 meter dipole.

So.  Stay tuned as I work through fixing my genuinely-awesome Kenwood TS-520 and get it back on the air!

73 ES GUD DX DE K9MJA

3 Days of Radio Fun, 1 Day of Radio Repair

Contacts, Contacts, Contacts

From Wednesday to Friday, I had fun on 40, 20, and 15 meters.  I contacted W1AW/4 in Florida on all three bands; I talked to KE7JNT on Vancouver Island on 15 and I talked to CO4LS in Cuba on 20.  I had my first non-net non-friend conversation with KI4UIE in Kentucky.

I've learned to quickly tune up my radio, making notes of what tuner settings work best for each band.  Tuning the radio and the tuner now takes me about 20 seconds.

15 Meter Audio Problem

I had a 15-minute conversation with W1KA in New Hampshire on 15 meters early Friday evening.  He gave me what seems to be the best explanation of my audio problem on 15 meters:  He said that when it was working, I was coming in at 5 to 10 over S9 - but when it cut out, it sounded like I was talking from across the room.  He helped me try a few different things - wiggling the mic wires, wiggling the Drive knob (where I know the bad solder joint is)... but nothing helped.

He had lots of nice things to say about my signal and the radio and the audio quality of the mic (when it was working), and he said that he looked forward to talking with me again when I get the audio problem sorted out.

Digging into the Radio

I decided to try to fix up the known problem with my radio - the visible bad solder joint on one of the air variable capacitors.  I also picked up a can of DeOxit from Radio Shack so that I could clean the dirty volume pot (and all the rest of the pots and switches as well).

I unhooked the power cord and the antenna and the microphone, took the top and bottom covers off - and then I proceeded to take the front faceplate off.  I technically didn't need to do this, but I decided to do it anyway just to see that I could do it.

This involved taking all the knobs off the front of the radio.  Here is what it looked like spread out across the desk, with the knobs and the screws (in an Altoids tin) on the Mac and the front faceplate over to the left.  There's also some tools and some solder wick and some flux and ... well, I don't keep the neatest work area.

After turning the radio upside down, I could spray the DeOxit into the bottom of each of the pots.  I could tell after a couple sprays in the volume pot that it was already turning smoother.  I also went ahead and sprayed every other pot and rotary switch I could get to, including all the wafers on the bandswitch.  I even opened the antenna relay compartment at the back of the radio and sprayed the last (hidden) section of the bandswitch.  Five minutes later, I re-sprayed all the pots and switches again.

After letting that dry for a bit, I took a good look at the repair I needed to make.  In order to fix the bad solder joint, I had to remove a metal shield between two of the coil boards:

If you look closely at the top and bottom of the shield, you will see that each screw is attached to a blob of solder, which is attached to the Heterodyne Oscillator board.  This is so that there is a good grounding connection between the Het Osc board and the shield.  So, my first task was to remove this solder.

I got out my trusty Radio Shack soldering iron.  After about 4 or 5 minutes, I realized that 30 watts wasn't going to make a dent in this solder, even with a bit of flux on it.  So, I got out my trusty PowerProbe butane soldering iron and the "Solder Sucker".  I was able to get enough solder removed from each side with the butane iron and the solder sucker (and a little bit of solder wick) so that I could loosen the screws and remove the shield.

Now I had reasonably good access to the bad solder joint.  I got the electric soldering iron out again and tried to heat up the pin on the capacitor.  Once again, it just wasn't doing the trick.  So, I made a gamble.

I approached the guts of my radio with a butane soldering iron.  Note that this thing gets hot.  The soldering tip has a flame vent where the extra heat escapes; I made sure that this vent was pointed vertically (rather than at either of the coil boards near where I was working).  I put a little bit of flux onto the problem area, heated up the pin and the surrounding solder with the very tip of the soldering iron, and then applied a nice clean blob of solder that completely coated the pin and the surrounding contact area.  Success!

Second Verse, Same As the First

As I looked over my work, I studied some of the other parts of the radio.  I happened to notice a second bad solder joint; this one was on the rearmost air variable capacitor, and was visibly in worse condition than the one I had just fixed:

Thankfully, the nearby shield did not have the grounding blobs of solder on its screws.  It did, however, have a ground jumper soldered right to the middle of one side of it.  After removing the screws, I grabbed the shield with a pair of needle-nose pliers; then I heated the solder with the butane iron until it loosened enough for me to pull the shield out.

Once again, I applied a little flux to the bad joint and resoldered it (again, with the butane iron!).  Then I screwed the shield back in place and re-soldered the ground jumper to it.

That's enough working inside the radio for one day.  I reattached the faceplate and put all the knobs back on.  The reattaching of the knobs was interesting, as I had to try to figure out how to align all the pointers with their appropriate markings on the faceplate, and I had to put the knobs back on in a particular order so that I could actually reach all of the set screws.  This took a few minutes, but I finally got it all back together.

I screwed the bottom cover back on, reattached the speaker connector, and laid the front cover on top of the radio.  I plugged the power cord and the antenna back in, and turned the radio on, hoping to hear the hiss of atmospheric static.

Uh oh.

Instead, I was greeted with silence, except for the sound of the meter needle being pegged all the way to the right.  I was stunned, although not entirely surprised.  I retraced my steps in my mind.  I did make sure not to melt or unsolder any other wires, right?  Yes.  I did remember to pull out that one piece of dried solder that fell out of the solder sucker when I reset the plunger while holding it over the radio instead of over the desk, right?  Yes, I did remember to get that.   I tried flipping the meter switch and the band switch; nothing.  All the while, I was only leaving the radio on for a couple seconds at time, just in case.

Frustration set in.  And disappointment.  And discouragement.  I have been having so much fun getting to know this radio; and I had no idea what I had done to it.

I turned it on one more time and listened.  I thought I heard the faintest bit of sound from the speaker, so I turned up the volume.  And then I absentmindedly turned up the RF Gain.

And the radio came back to life.  Loudly.  And I laughed at myself and shook my head.  The RF Gain acts as a squelch control; it's really handy when listening to loud signals, because it allows you to cut back the gain so that the static disappears.  I usually leave the RF Gain set at 10 so that I can hear even the weakest signals that float slightly above the noise.  As you turn it back, the meter needle moves to the right to show you the minimum level of signal that is being received.

When I had reattached all the knobs on the front panel, I had set all of them to zero so that I could line them up (and get to the set screws so that I could tighten them).  I had never had the RF Gain knob set at zero before, so I did not expect this behavior (complete silence and a pegged meter).  But once I turned it back up, and the radio came back to life, I realized exactly what I had done.  I went to 40 meters and spun the frequency knob, the familiar sounds of lots of conversations (strong and weak) gave me great comfort.

Heating It Up

I decided to tune it up on 40 meters.  I tuned the transmitter into the dummy load, and then I tuned the antenna.  And then I switched to CW to adjust the Load for maximum output.

And my radio was putting out almost 150 watts.  I've never seen a reading that high on the radio.  Could my cleaning and soldering have made that much of an improvement?

I tuned to 15 meters and tuned up there as well - probably about 130 watts.

And then I wondered...

What About 10 Meters?

My radio had been deaf and mute on 10 meters - no receive, and no power out.  I decided to give it another shot.  I turned the bandswitch to 28 MHz and turned up the volume.

And I heard something.

I consulted my tuner manual for appropriate inductor/capacitor settings for 10 meters, and I adjusted the Drive control for the loudest noise.  I then spun through the band - and I heard signals!  I heard Japan calling CQ; I heard lots of digital traffic.

So, I decided to try to tune up the transmitter as well.  Wow, the tuner is much more touchy at the higher frequencies!  But, I got a good match on the antenna and hit CW Send.

125 watts out.  On 10 meters.  Into a 40-meter dipole.  With about a 1.2:1 SWR.  From a radio that was previously DEAD on 10 meters.

Whether it was the two solder joints, or a dirty bandswitch, or something else - doesn't matter at this point.  The crazy thing works and I'm pretty ecstatic about that.

And a New Mic Cable

I had ordered a replacement mic cable from eBay, expecting it to arrive on Monday.  Well, it arrived today!

So, after getting the radio working (and then taking a break), I tackled the mic cable.  I had to search carefully to find out which had a shielded audio cable in it; the one I found actually has an extra wire in it - it is 4 conductors, with one of them shielded, which makes it actually a 5-conductor wire.

I carefully trimmed back the cable on both ends.  The plug was on the "straight" end of the cable, but I needed the straight end of the cable to go into the microphone - so I unsoldered the plug.  (By the way, the electric soldering iron was plenty capable for this job.)  I then trimmed back the cable jacket - about 1 inch on the coiled plug end, and about 3 inches on the mic end.  I soldered the appropriate wires onto the plug and tested them with the ohmmeter; I then clamped the cable into the mic stand and soldered the 4 wires in that end.

The result?  A mic cable that looks like it actually belongs:

I haven't actually had the mic on the air yet, but I have verified that it moves the meter when talking into the dummy load.

Now, I just need to make another contact on 15 meters to see if my audio problem is still present.

All in all, a day of radio repair that turned out good - in fact, it turned out better than expected!

73 until next time!

- Mike, K9MJA