Wednesday, April 24, 2013

STANCOR 10P TRANSMITTER UPDATE 7

     I had just reached the point of starting to wire up the heater circuit the other night when--

     I broke a terminal on the oscillator tube socket and realized the modulator socket was oriented wrong.

     The modulator socket was easy to fix -- unsolder the one modulation transformer lead still attached, removed retaining ring, turn socket, reinstall.

      The oscillator socket is ceramic and not as easy.  After a false start and much struggling, I did get it moved.
     Now I have to redress the heater leads and solder them.

     One of the coils arrived today.  Thanks to an uninformed packing job, it rattled around in the box all the way and arrived with the fragile old plastic broken.
     There's a fix for this, involving taping to shape and applying multiple layers of "coil dope," polystyrene dissolved in toluene or acetone.   I seem have  misplaced my bottle of the stuff, so I will have to buy or make more.  I'll still have to fabricate a new support bar to hold the coil to its plug.

     Such damage is not unsusual; the old plastic becomes quite brittle over time.  It's just disappointing.

     (The damaged octal socket is next to the coil.)

     I'm looking for 80-meter and 20-meter coils -- if you see any boxes like this one, do look inside, please!

     Some of the frequency-determining crystals (probably) arrived today, but they're "signature required" and no one was home.  I'll try to pick them up tomorrow.  One step at a time.

3 comments:

  1. On the first radio I ever built, a Knight Kit "Star Roamer". I was unaware of the concept called "keyway". I had all the sockets, terminal strips and other bits mounted, and was just about to start wiring it, when my friend who got me interested in radio came by to see how I was doing.

    Several hours later I had all the tube sockets correctly positioned, and began wiring it.

    Keep plugging away, I'm sure it will be a fun little rig when you're done!

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  2. RX,
    those ceramic sockets if the pin is broken off its easy to extract the pin and replace it
    with one from a good socket. They usually have one or two "stakes" to retain them and its
    easy to flatten them and push them out the top and then drop it in the old socket.

    I used to repair obscure radios like TwinVs, T44s, and preProgs so pulling a whole socket
    for a damaged pain was to be avoided (much wires).

    Good luck and keep the story running.

    Eck!

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  3. I was giving replacing the contact serious thought, but my sockets with matching contacts were not exact matches and it was already unwired.

    ReplyDelete