[Milsurplus] Most Difficult Bandswitch Clean

[w8au at sssnet.com]

At 02:33 PM 1/18/2012, Rob Flory wrote:
>I've heard about the legendary difficult recaps like S-28 and SCR-300(lived
>through that one) but for difficult band switch cleaning I am going to
>nominate the RBB/RBC.  I'm perfectly happy to play with
>unstable radios if that is how they were built, but that is not the case
>for the RBC.
>
>So, just to be able to spray some gunk on the band switch you are looking
>at removing about 20 screws to remove interior covers(after removing the
>radio from the chassis).  Then you have to remove 4 boxes, again about 20
>screws per box to extract it and then open it.  This is after extracting
>the band switch shaft.  There's 14 wires to be removed from the boxes but
>thankfully they are lugged and not soldered so you don't have to mess up
>the "pretty".
>
>If you want to exercise the switch sections after you spray the gunk on
>them, you have to get them lined back up again so that you will be able to
>get the shaft back in.  Did I mention the part about the individual
>sections having no detents?
>
>It was well worth it.  Now I don't have to play with the band switch to get
>the radio to come alive, and it will switch back to the same CW station
>after flipping to another band.

You have put our frustrations into words, Rob.   We've gone through this
(RBB/RBC) about a dozen times, (two of us) and sometimes re-doing them when
the desired result was not obtained.  I would say it gets easier after the
first few (familiarity) but still not a fun "quickie" job! :-|

Has anyone developed a gimbal service mount?  We have done a "lazy Susan"
turntable but not much time saved over just manually turning them.

But it's nice to get those beasts working like new...   thanks
for your documentary....

Perry   (USS LST325)