[AMRadio] I must confess

[Robert Sauvan]

Hi all,
I know a number of you remember my request for help in fixing my Ranger 
keying itself. After numerous suggestions to research the problem, I 
thought I had it nailed down to a couple of capacitors that I replaced 
as a result of everyones help. Especially, Jim W4ENE. He spent time to 
send me a schematic with voltage specs I should look for and even bet 
money on one particular cap, which actually was a bit flaky and 
replaced. I put the Ranger back on the air and it worked fine for a 
couple of days. I was so convinced the problem was fixed I emailed 
everyone to thank you for the help. But,all of a sudden it started 
acting up again as it did before. After much head scratching to a bloody 
mess. I decided to go back through my emails and start from square one. 
I looked all of them over. One suggestion was to look at the key jack at 
the radio to see if it had a shorted wire or resistor or something. 
Sorry, I dont remember who suggested that but I started there. In the 
process I decided to pull the key plug out of the radio and turned it 
on. I thought if I had a loose wire it would act up as I put the plug 
back in and out while the radio was on. I plugged the key back in and lo 
and behold, the radio keyed. Maybe I was on to something, maybe it was a 
loose wire or short. Instead of assuming this was it,as I do a lot, I 
decided to swap cables and keys to eliminate that source. Come to find 
out, I have a keying monitor relay that I use to monitor my signal while 
sending cw. I have had this thing since 1969 when I first became a 
novice. When a key was plugged in bypassing the monitor, all was good. 
The problem was found. I tore the thing apart and there were only 3 
items that could have been causing the problem. A resistor, capacitor 
and the relay. I replaced the cap and resistor right away because I had 
those in my parts bin.Tried the unit again and still had the problem. 
Gotta be the relay. I put the relay on a meter and noticed that it would 
hang up occasionally. I needed a Babcock 450 ohm 26.5 volt relay which I 
had never heard of. Found one on Ebay, ordered it, put it in today, and 
honestly, this time we have fixed the Ranger keying problem.

I must confess that I do get ahead of myself at times, but with all of 
you guys giving me some guidance, I finally get it figured out. Probably 
comes quite easy to most of you, but it is a real battle for me. But, Im 
learning. Now that I have this issue behind me, I just picked up a nice 
HT-32. It works great on all bands in CW and SSB but I dont have any DSB 
on any band or 10/11 meter output. Any suggestions would be grateful as 
to where to start looking for these 2 problems.

Thanks to everyone for the help-Bob-W0YBS