[Johnson] Ranger 1

[Jim Brannigan]

Adrian,
In addition to my stock comments below.  I replaced all the silver micas in 
the VFO.

When these radios were built the only stable transmitter was crystal 
controlled.  Receivers were not very narrow and they drifted also, everyone 
learned to live with it.
After a warm up period the Ranger should be "reasonably" stable.  While it 
is fun to operate on CW, I would not consider it a serious CW radio in 2006.

Jim

When I acquired my Ranger I, I assessed the radio mechanically and
electrically, it appeared to be a kit build and had a number of
modifications.  It was 50 years old and time for some serious TLC.
I decided to bring it back to factory new conditions.  Not pristine, but
working as it should have left the factory with updated power supplies and
PTT.
Part of my goal was that I did not want to replace a component a week until
it worked properly.

A search of the WEB returned a number of good articles.  I read each one and
decided which ones to incorporate in the new/old radio.
The BAMA site has the user manual and construction manual, a must have.

I took the radio apart and gave it a good cleaning with "Simple Green" and a
garden hose.
After a through drying, I replaced all electrolytics, interstage capacitors,
some bypasses, metering resistors and anything that looked slightly funny. A
three wire power and fuse installed.
The power supplies were solid-stated and a PTT circuit added.
Deoxit and lithium grease were used where appropriate.

I was rewarded with a radio that played (almost, a few tweaks were needed)
and has run without incident for 6 months.



> 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