[MRCA] weekend

[grasshopper]

Hang in there Ray.

 

You did not miss anything sleeping through the milrad net Saturday morning,
Band was very long and few people heard each other.

 

You were doing fine up here near Gilbert on the moose and squirrel net.

 

If you can keep the ARC-38 going, suspect ARR-41 should not be a problem!!

 

Steve, kd3ht

 

  _____  

From: MRCA [mailto:mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Ray Fantini
Sent: Sunday, March 20, 2016 12:03 PM
To: Military Surplus Mail List; MRCA at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [MRCA] weekend

 

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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