[Johnson] Ranger 1

[Adrian Ellison]

Greetings to all on the list .

I have recently aquired a Ranger 1 which was sold to me as a runner, however 
it does have some problems, namely vfo stability (or rather, lack of).  I'm 
recently licensed and bought this to use exclusively for cw work, mainly on 
40/20 metres.  The vfo seems okay on the 1.75-2.0 mhz, and I hit the marks on 
the meter and get about 40-50w into the dummy load, sounds pretty clean, but 
on the 7mhz tank it's all over the place, I've never heard anything quite so 
bad to be honest, plus on this band 40/20/15 etc, the buffer current drops by 
over half and I get sprogs all over the band from v3.   I see it's had the 
"standard" fire in the vfo box but that's all fixed, just had to sweep some 
ash out and replace R3/v2, and I've replaced c12/c13 to no avail ... but the 
bit that bothers me is that the LV rectifier tube has been solid stated and 
is now giving close to 400 volts, isn't that too high, should I be thinking 
of putting a series regulator in there to get it back down to 300v or is it 
better to look at obtaining another 6ax5?
I wasn't expecting miracles, but am I perhaps expecting too much from it re 
h/f cw work? ie, if I do go to the trouble of completely removing the vfo, 
replacing everything, stabilising the 300v, can I reasonably expect to be 
able to use it on cw? or should I rather box it up now and pass it on to 
somebody who's interested in AM, where the frequency instability would 
probabably not be so readily noticed?

Your thoughts and comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks and 73

Adrian ZS1TTZ