[Milsurplus] RAK and RAL - replace Aerovox 1uf caps bolted underneath chassis

[Kenneth G. Gordon]

On 17 Jun 2019 at 15:13, Joe Connor via Milsurplus wrote:

> I had the same problem with those 1 mfd caps. Thankfully, there's plenty of room 
> for replacements. I also had a problem with a few of the brown mica (?)

I am not sure those are micas, Joe. I think they are actually paper. I remember that when the 
RAL/RAK sounded like there were static bursts even with no antenna connected, those 
inter-stage coupling caps were bad.

As I have mentioned here more than once, I used an RAL-7 as my main station receiver for 
something like 12 years, beginning in about 1958.  I just loved it. I traded a BC-348 with 
BC-band "ARC-5" Q-5er for it because I wanted to operate on 15 meters.

> coupling 
> caps, and I found a fair amount of resistors that had drifted more than 20% high.

Yes. By now, pretty much all of them are bad.

>     get sent they never get reflected out.  There is an email this morning about RAK and RAL 
>     receivers, and I just wanted to add in, that in addition to finding basically what that fellow 
>     did, I found all the Aerovox 1uf caps bolted underneath the chassis to be high to low 
>     resistance shorts on both of my RAK and RAL, and changing them out really makes them 
>     work well.

I agree with this too.

Those caps are actually oil-filled, and thus should be unusually reliable, but after 70 years, 
even those get tired.

I have one RAK which was stored for a long time up-side down, and all that oil ran out of 
them and coated the insides. What a mess! Although it was an essentially new Motorola 
RAK-8, as far as I'm concerned now, it is only good for parts.

At the moment, I own something like 5 RALs and 7 or 8 RAKs, I only need one of each. Not 
sure what I will do with the others... Some of each have been somewhat hacked...

Rats.

I also have several RBLs. One or two are essentially new.

In my experience, the RBL is not nearly the receiver that the RAK is, despite the fact that it 
has a built-in power supply and a direct-reading frequency dial. It is far less stable than the 
RAK for one thing.

I was very interested in what Dave had to tell us about the 'phone jack in the RAL/RAK: I 
never knew that. I always used a pair of 600 ohm Navy phones with mine with a standard 2 
circuit jack on it. I wonder if I wrecked the output transformer? If so, I never noticed it.

Seems like one can learn something new about our favorite rigs even at this late date.

Ken W7EKB