[Johnson] even more Ranger adventures

[Bill Cromwell]

Hi Everybody,

Thanks for the thoughtful and helpful replies. I already did find some
of the info about the Ranger a little while back. I posted about my
adventures with the Ranger then. At that time I found screws loose and
even missing completely on the VFO enclosure. There were some 'dirty'
switch contacts that I cleaned up and it seemed to be good enough to
play with for a while. On 80 it still is or seems to be. I replaced the
6AU6 with a 6AH6 and got an improvement last time. The plate tuning
control had the ends of the metal shafts touching inside the coupler and
I corrected that. Other things I corrected that I can't recall but they
were in the notes. 

I have been looking in the manual to get a list of the caps, some of
which I replaced last time I was in there - power supply electrolytics
and one on the keyer. I am going to just bite the bullet and replace all
of them that are on 40/11 meters or made of paper or electrolytic. The
variable caps all seem to be good - except - somebody tacked a mica
compression variable cap back inside the VFO!! I don't see that in the
manual pictorials!! Does anybody have an idea about a mod that uses
something like that? I can't see back in there quite well enough to see
where the business end is connected but it seems to be in the 40/11
meter circuit! Any bets?

I noticed that part of the problem seemed to be load variations on the
VFO (40 meters). For grins I swapped the 6CL6s around and got an
immediate, remarkable improvement (not enough). Both check OK on a tube
checker but ya know...I guess that's one more thing to do..get some more
tubes. I'm going to recheck for loose or missing screws, too. I have to
dig that little toy radio compression cap out of the VFO (unless
somebody knows why it's supposed to be there. I didn't notice that
before but now I'm looking to see what I need to do to get access inside
the VFO, comparing the manual with what I see back inside the enclosure.

Now there is a suggestion that the Ranger will work on 30 meters. I
wonder about 17 and 12 meters. That suggests using an external VFO
plugged into one of the xtal sockets. Of course, none of them running
straight through but multiplied. The Ranger is an
oscillator-buffer/multiplier-amplifier TX after all. I do know my
Johnson Matchbox works on the WARC bands just it's not labeled. I think
I'm going to find out and I'll post about that, too. Maybe I can get a
few xtals to try it first.

And since I have to take it all apart I'll dig out that info I have on
my hard drive about matching paint. The top edge of the VFO panel has
some small chips and there has always been a small patch of paint
missing on top of the cabinet. I'll need sunglasses in my shack!

73,

Bill  KU8H