[Johnson] more Ranger adventures - WARC

[Bill Cromwell]

Hi,

This is about the question of the Ranger on the WARC bands.

I looked through a big pile of old FT-243 crystals I have here. I would
expect to operate the Ranger with crystals from ~5 MC (for 30 meters)
and low 6 to mid 6 MC crystals for 17 and 12 meters. I found a few of ~6
MC crystals and tried them. A few were no good. None were on CW
frequencies that I would like to use on the air. But the Ranger did work
on 17 and 12 meters. I found that I needed to set the Ranger for the
next higher band - 15 meters to operate on 17 meters and 11 meters to
operate on 12 meters. I had to watch on 17 meters to see just where the
grid and plate circuits were being tuned as I could get a pseudo-peak
(or dip) at some much higher frequency (that I didn't try to calculate).
If the desired crystal harmonic is lower than the band in use I would
expect resonance to occur with those capacitors more fully meshed. The
grid peak and plate dip that occurred at the "other" settings were not
complete. The grid tuning showed a sharp rise and fall but that was with
the plates fully open and back to closing again!! A similar thing
happened for the plate dip. Be careful about that if you want to use
your Ranger on the WARC bands.

I also have a Knight T-60 and the manual even warns you about that
possibility especially for six meters on the T-60. It applies to the
Ranger as well when operating on the WARC bands. Unless you are going to
operate with the case off you need to be aware of how your tuning knobs
relate to the capacitor plates.

73,

Bill  KU8H