[ARC5] WHINK and crystals.

[Kenneth G. Gordon]

Yesterday I decided to fire up the GRC-109 for the first time in a couple of years, so I dug out 
my box of crystals, and set the rig up on the bench.

The first crystal I grabbed was my only 7025 rock, and I plugged it in and pressed the key.

Nothing.

Hmmm....says I...

So I checked all the voltages, took the transmitter ouf of its box to make sure everything was 
lighting up, etc. Everything was normal.

So, I grabbed another crystal and tried it. Viola! Everything worked fine.

Took the 7025 crystal apart to find it split in two pieces right across from one corner to the 
other.

I took one of those FT-243s I had bought to try moving them into the ham bands, a 6975 Khz 
rock. I plugged it into the '109 and it fired right up. The frequency counter read 6975.35 KHz.

I took that one apart, carefully, and dropped the crystal blank into a cup I had made by cutting 
the bottom couple of inches off a much larger styrofoam cup, marking it carefully with skull 
and cross bones, and pouring 1/8" of WHINK into.

After about 30 minutes of soaking in the WHINK, I carefully fished it out with a pair of 
tweezers and washed it off in cold water. It had moved up 500 Hz. to 6579.88 KHz.

Calculating the shift-rate at approximately 2 KHz/hour, I left the crystal in the stuff for the next 
14 hours. Now it oscillates vigorously at 7009 KHz.

Final calculations show approximately 2.2 KHz/hour of soaking in WHINK.

To get it to 7025 KHz, I need to soak it another 7.3 hours, or 7 hours and 18 minutes.

It is now 2:40 PM here. I'll let it soak until 9:58 PM.

Let's see how close I can get to my goal of 7025 KHz.

Ken W7EKB