[Premium-Rx] Crystal filter repair

[Carcia, Frank A. HS]

	Hi All,
	I bought a pair of matching filters a couple weeks ago for the
purpose of
	cascading them. The frequency response was a bit low and I couldn't
	tune out the pass band ripple with external components. I considered
a 
	ride to visit my gold smith Brother but it was the weekend and I
just couldn't
	wait. He has this nice small pin point torch. Well I decided to go
for it.
	I mounted the filter in the vise and lit the old benzo-matic. I set
the flame
	so it was about an inch long and ran the flame around the solder
bead.
	After about 30 seconds I gave a ground lug a tug with a large needle
	nose and pop it slid apart. Feeling lucky I opened the other one.
	Each filter had 6 crystals and 3 trim caps. I was able to adjust the
6 caps
	to end up with less than 1 dB of pass band ripple and raised the
frequency
	to where I wanted it. The filters were for WJ first IF 40.455 8 KHz
wide.
	2 filters in series gave me 6.5 KHz at 1 dB down.
	The last time I tried this I used a large soldering iron and had
problems.
	The flame is the way to go and the case was not deformed in any way.
	I just have to wick off the extra solder.
	Go for it if you have a sick filter.   fc