[Boatanchors] CE-200V progress/problems - Status update 4/21/10

[Paul]

Still fighting a few problems due to corrosion so pulled all the coil sets to clean the pins etc. Since I already had the coils out, and at least had some CW output on all bands I figured I might as well finish adding Nick Tusa's 160 meter conversion to the osc, driver and 2nd mixer stages.  I had already installed the final tank and made the  cosmetic "band light enabled" change earlier. The mods took a little time but only because those coil wires are really tiny and I wanted to make sure they were stripped properly (wanted to solder them in once and have them correct the first time) and also the existing parts needed a little dressing around to fit the new coils/parts into the can. I probably spent about two hours on the total job.
 
Reassembled everything and fired it up. First checked the existing bands 80 thru 10. Whatever I did cleaning the coil pins seemed to help a great deal. I don't have a sweep generator at this time so I just used trial and error and peaked the coils at each end of the ham bands then check for a relatively flat output across the ham band. I'm happy to report that I now have a full, clean, 100 watts output on 80 thru 15 meters, 10 meters is still a holdout, can't get more than about 55 watts output across 10 meters.
 
So on to 160 meters, switched to the "X" band and keyed it up.... no output. Well, expected that, so started to tweak the 160 meter oscillator coil. The core had pretty much been at the top of the form anyway so it took many turns to get it down and then all of a sudden I had 160 output.  Carefully tweaked for max and I now have a full 100 watts out on 160. Checked the frequency range and it was broad from 1.9 to 2.2mc, made very slight adjustments to the driver and 2nd mixer coils and now have full 100 watts out from 1.8 to 2.0mc, drops off pretty quick on each end of the band but gives full coverage for 160.
 
Many thanks to Nick Tusa for a well planned and executed conversion kit. Straight forward installation and really works the first time if you do your part. Just pay attention. As Nick says, the oscillator coll will need a lot of tweaking but the driver and 2nd mixer shouldn't need more than a quarter turn, and in my case they didn't, only took a minor tweak of each to get the full 160 meter band coverage.
 
Even had time to start looking at the audio stages. Well, lots of work to do there. Suppression is good but once the speech gain is turned up there's lot's of noise and very weak audio. So on to troubleshooting thoses stages. At least now I have what I consider a fully functioning CE-200V on 160 thru 10 meters CW for the time being.
 
More updates once the audio issues are resolved.
 
73, 
Paul W2EC