[Boatanchors] Ranger Question

[JAMES HANLON]

Thanks Bill, Dale, and Rob for your responses to my Ranger query.  It turns out that Bill gave the most immediately useful advice.  I torqued all of the hold-down screws that I could reach on the shield between the final and the driver, and that seems to have eliminated my parasitic on 160.  I was just about to slide the rig into its cabinet and put it up on the shelf, so your hint came just in time.

As to treating the Ranger like a DX-100 and just switching the AC to the HV transformer primary - that would be a good suggestion except that the Ranger has just a single power transformer with separate 5 and 6 volt filament windings and one HV winding that has taps for a bias supply, 300 volt supply for the low level audio and RF stages and the keyer, and 500 volt supply for the Final and Modulator stages.  That HV winding has a single center tap, so if I opened it I wouldn't have any voltage to spot the VFO.  So I have to resort to plan B for control on this rig.  Plan B involves keeping the B+ on all of the RF stages, cutting the oscillator, buffer, and multiplier stages off with blocking bias from the keyer, and pulling the final screen voltage down with a "clamp tube."   The clamp tube works fine so long as the final does not take off and oscillate on its own.

As to the Ranger being good for only local contacts on 160, I'll know better when I get it on the air.  But on 160 I have worked into Minnesota multiple times and also Wisconsin using my 1929 style MOPA running 25 watts to a 10Y, and into California with a Command Set running about 50 watts (all on cw, from New Mexico), so I think that 60 or so watts to the Ranger should be heard somewhere.  The reason I'm using a Ranger is that its spot is on the top shelf up in a corner.  The last time I took a 100 pound DX-100 down from that spot for some service, I knew that this 80 year-old body was not going to win wrestling it back up there again.  The Ranger is sufficiently smaller and lighter so that I can still get it up there without killing myself.

So once again, guys, thanks for your help.  Hope to see you on 160 and 40 phone with the Ranger.

73,

Jim, W8KGI