[MRCA] weekend

[Ray Fantini]

Nothing special, just wanted to rant about this weekend. With last week being spring break had big plans for this weekend. First I received all the components (MS-116,117 and 118) to complete the vertical for my GRC-106 on the M151 and was looking forward to operating that on the M&S net on Saturday, second I was going to get up at a quarter of five and check into the Old Military Radio Net on 3885 with the RT-311/ARC-38 along with using the companion ARR-41 receiver. That was the plan at least.
The reality was after testing the ARC-38 on Friday night and confirming everything is up and running using the ARC-38 thru the 180L3 antenna tuner to the 160 inverted V I blew a fuse in the AC power supply for the radio but that was an easy fix, cranked up the ARR-41 and somehow it had developed a louse coupling on the tuning shaft and lost calibration so had to pull that radio to look at resolving that issue on Saturday.  The next morning managed to sleep right thru the five AM net; five o'clock comes early around here. That settled I moved on to driving the jeep out of the shed and setting up the vertical antenna for the 106 first using two 116 and the 117 and 118 sections and got no love from the 106 amplifier in terms of trying to get the two meters to balance so figured that I needed an additional 116 and went to three sections but still was  not able to get both meters to center and having read all the warnings about deviating from the book decided that I would scrap the plan for operating that day, at least from the 106 and retreated inside and used the Harris URC-94. I was surprised to see that the 106 received just as well as the Harris using just the whip or as well as it did last week using the push up mast and an inverted V now just need to look into why it wont load.
Back in the shop the ARR-41 is up on the bench. Let me start by saying that I do not own now and in no point in the future would want to own a R-390, A or otherwise being I have had my fill of working on them in the past and always regarded them as heavy, over designed and overpriced, but that's just me. The ARR-41 is something like if you had to try to build an airborne version of the R-390 with using a PTO, variable first IF and variable slug racks. Some may be compelled to compare all this to the R-390 but in my mind it has more in common with radios like the ARC-38 and later 618T family then its huge and heavy relative the R-390
 Being that I have a thing for the ARC-38 that's what brought me into the idea of using an ARR-41 as a companion receiver, they even share a common audio module.
 On my receiver the old ham coupler on the input to the PTO had become louse, this allowed the PTO and IF rack to no longer match the display but what's worse is it also allowed the mechanical turn limiter to get out of track so much time was spent getting them back into alignment and after that I noticed that the slip clutch that allows you vary the frequency display slightly was not slipping so after removing microscopic c clips and spring packs that set the back friction  I  cleaned the surface of the clutch that was frozen stuck. After cleaning it upon reassembly found I did not have enough friction so that involved messing with a small shim on the spring side and after that and maybe putting in to many shims the back of the clutch detached itself so now I am dealing with trying to get that all together again. The biggest problem I see at this point is that with the cult of Collins collectors out there what would once been a simple matter of just rigging something together to replace the clutch now involves having to do it right and return it to all original state when done. The ARR-41 is quickly starting to have less and less appeal to me just like the R-390

Ray F/KA3EKH

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