[Milsurplus] RAK-7 adventures

[Bill Cromwell]

Hi,

It looks like after all these years my RAK-7 needs a little bit of TLC.
It still works...but...

In my last move the glass on the heater voltage meter was popped loose
(not broken) and tipped inward to interfere with the needle. I pulled
the radio part way out of the cabinet to remove the meter and repair it.
It's remarkably clean inside. Some of the controls have become
"scratchy" so I used a small amount of contact cleaner on the ones I
could get to without upending the radio. Fortunately the switches on the
bottom panel are NOT noisy.

I started removing the tubes to wipe some contact cleaner on the pins
and reinsert them into their sockets. In the back row, the first tube I
pulled the insulation cracked on the grid lead. YIKES! I got it back
together without a short...but that is worrisome. I merely rocked the
other two tubed in their sockets. The gears behind the tuning knob were
dried so I put some "lubri-cam" - a thin grease I have left over from
when cars had ignition points. I worked a very thin coat of that into
the gear teeth.

But now I must make plans to take the radio much further apart and
replace deteriorated wires. I'll disassemble the tuning mechanism enough
to clean and lubricate *ALL* of the moving bearing surfaces. Tomorrow
when the adhesive has cured I'll reassemble the meter and the radio and
continue using it while I accumulate materials and more importantly the
time on a cleared off bench to wade into the TLC project. It has yaken
an incredilbly long time for the RAK to deteriorate this far. And it
still seems to work fine. I only wanted to fix the meter glass.

73,

Bill  KU8H