[Johnson] more Ranger adventures - done for now

[Bill Cromwell]

Hi,

So I got the Ranger looking pretty vulnerable on the bench. That extra
cap that was tacked in there wasn't even tacked in very well. I removed
it. Nasty! Most of the screws and nuts were loose to one extent or
another. A few wires fell apart as soon as I touched them! Ugly! Some
difficult to see/reach bandswitch sections were pretty well messed up.
With the radio half torn down I was able to clean them up. A couple of
other switch sections weren't too bad but I got into those anyway. There
are still three or four screws missing that I'll buy replacements
tomorrow. I already had replacement parts for some of them.

I put the radio back together again and it works pretty close to the way
it probably did in the 50s and 60s. There is a little bit of chirp and a
small amount of drift on 40 and 20 - worse on 15. I only let it warm up
five minutes before I calibrated the VFO and tried it out. After I
finished checking it out I turned my receiver to real on the air signals
on 40 meters. The first QSO I heard was from a Collins transmitter that
was chirping and drifting on 40 worse than my Ranger! Even so..the
"character" didn't sound too bad and the other ham gave that guy a good
report. The Ranger has that "sequenced" keying so the little chirp I'm
hearing in my receiver a few feet away may not even be going on the air.

I'm going to order up some caps and resistors and screws and wires and
tubes and crystals and stuff but meanwhile I'm going to whiz up the
interface/glue to hook the Ranger up with my pretty receiver and get it
on the air. I had a chance today to see how to take it apart and put it
back together so it will be easier when all the parts get here. Some of
the dirty parts - knobs and such - cleaned up pretty nice while they
were off. Maybe later I'll put together an external VFO to bring the
performance into the 21st century. But I noticed how easy it was to pick
out that Collins this evening <evil grin>.

I'm having fun working on this Ranger and I'm posting results as I go
along in hopes of helping somebody else when they run their search
engine. It's good to compare notes with other people who have been
there, too.

73,

Bill  KU8H