[Milsurplus] RAK-RAL - the use of...

[Ron De Silva]

Yesterday evening with the trusty RAL5 and TDE2 on the big 10ft diam mag
loop....no problem for a QSO with  C6AXX Bahamas .

Radios refereed to as "hopeless relics" by one of the ham magazines of the
60's.

😅

They just WORK !
Ron

NU6F
RENO,NV

On Sat, Oct 21, 2023, 9:54 PM howard holden <holden7471 at msn.com> wrote:

> Amen Ken! As far as readout goes that’s why ships carried the LM freq
> meters. The transmitters often had no direct readout either. The RAL is
> just a sweet receiver. And built like a tank.
>
> Howie WB2AWQ
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Oct 21, 2023, at 21:43, Kenneth G. Gordon <kgordon2006 at frontier.com>
> wrote:
>
> 
> I have made somewhat extensive use of both the RAL and the RAK receivers
> and would like to share some of my experiences with both.
> Both of my receivers were being operated from the original power supplies,
> which are really too big and too power hungry for ham radio use. They
> aren't needed where you don't have big turrets being swung around drawing
> the line voltage down each time.
> In a normal ham station, a very simple supply, providing 180 VDC at a few
> miliamps is usually all that is required. A regulated 90 VDC is nice, but
> not absolutely necessary.
> In fact, according to the manuals on these receivers, they work just fine
> with ONLY the 90 VDC source.
> Anyway, with regard to the RAK, I used mine to copy 5 letter code grounps
> from the U.S. Navy VLF stations while they were still using CW, and before
> they switched to RATT. I was intending to work my way up to 30 wpm of
> steady error-free copy as I wanted to go to sea to be a ship-board radio
> operator.
> I eventually got my 2nd Class Radio Telegraph license toward that end, but
> many things intervened and I never was able to complete that project.
> The Navy station at Jim Creek in Washington state always came in to my
> station in Missoula, Montana like gang-busters 24/7/365. I think I could
> have used a wet-string as an antenna.
> The first thing I noticed about my RAK was its amazing stability. It was
> rock steady. Once tuned to a signal, it remained there. One could literally
> hammer on the radio with a hammer and it never moved frequency.
> The second, most amazing thing, to find was its "single-signal"
> selectivity. The "other side" of zero beat simply wasn't there....at all.
> Not even a hint of it.
> I am still somewhat in the dark as to how this was done. I believe it was
> due to the "Q" of the tuned circuits in the radio. I understand that that
> value was around 1500, which is very unusual for such coils.
> Maybe someone here can enlighten me how this was done.
> With regard to my RAL, I traded a BC-348 with BC band ARC-5 "Q-5er" for it
> while I was a new General (actualy Conditional) class ham so that I could
> work 15 meters.
> I used my RAL for some 12 years as my only station receiver, and never
> turned it off.
> My ONLY complaint with it was the total lack of a real frequency readout.
> Using the tuning chart in the manual was difficult, but I got used to it.
> Again, like the RAK, it was unconditionally stable.
> I really liked its "quietness" and sensitivity.
> I used it for every common mode at the time, CW, AM, SSB, RTTY. I could
> have used it for digital modes (other than CW and RTTY) if they had existed
> at the time.
> Ken W7EKB
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