[Johnson] more Ranger adventures

[Al Parker]

Hi Bill,
	It is curable, but might take a while ;-)
	One problem with the Rangers is that the VFO is on the operating freq 
for 40m.  They are prone to getting RF feedback when doing that, which 
will cause symptoms like yours.  You need to be mechanically tight, 
loosen & retighten all screws, particularly those for ground lugs and 
shields, including those at tube sockets.  I'm sure there's some info 
back in the archives of this list that speak to that, it you can't find 
anything easily, let me know, I'll dig in my stuff.
	I had the problem badly in a Valiant, and ended up making a sliding 
ground for one tuning shaft that went thru the panel & wasn't well 
grounded. You can read abt that at 
<http://www.boatanchors.org/valiant.htm>  The Ranger may not have that 
particular cause of problem.
73,

Al, W8UT
www.boatanchors.org
www.hammarlund.info

"There is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- half so much
worth doing as simply messing about in boats"
Ratty, to Mole

On 8/6/2011 2:25 PM, Bill Cromwell wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been having the devil of a time with the VFO stability (40
> meters) on my Ranger. Without tearing it all apart I have cleaned up the
> band switch and the wipers in the calibration caps as best I can. The
> 160/80 meter bands sound like xtal control and the 40 through 10 meter
> bands are just plain ugly, drifty, wobbly, etc. On the 40 meter setting
> the frequency changes markedly from the zero to the cw key. It chirps
> and yoops and hops all over the place. I had made some improvements
> earlier but now it's worse than ever. I'm taking it out of the
> transmitter to work it over. It's difficult or impossible to do very
> much with it mounted in the Ranger. I think I can see some solder joints
> back in there that are not just the very best I have ever seen. I'm
> going to whiz up a power supply for it so that I can whip and beat on it
> without the entire Ranger hanging on the ends of the wires. More later
> as I make some progress.
>
> I like the Ranger and if I can make it work right I'll be using it for
> low power, tube based operation in my station. It will fit right in with
> my QRP ops - it dials down well under 5 watts. Since I am not very
> interested in AM phone I have removed the audio tubes so the Ranger is
> not eating up power for those. It may turn out that the best I can do on
> 40 meters (and up) will not be good enough (a little bit of 'character'
> is OK) so that I might try building an external VFO to plug into one of
> the xtal sockets. The external VFO would use a heterodyne scheme so the
> oscillators can run all the time and just key the mixer. Output at 1.75
> to 2 MC and 7 to 7.4 (or less) MC of course. 11 meters sounds even worse
> than 40 - 10 meters, but who cares about 11 meters? Yes I'll try to fix
> 11 meters, too, just so the Ranger works like it's supposed to.
>
> 73,
>
> Bill  KU8H
>
> _____________________________________