[Premium-Rx] WJ 8888-2 synthesizer failure

[Heinz Breuer]

Hello,
I bought a Watkins-Johnson WJ 8888-2 receiver last weekend at the 
HAMRADIO fair in Friedrichshafen/Germany at Lake Constance. The seller 
assured me that the receiver was working fine and I have no reason to 
doubt it. Anyhow I put it up today and there is a faulty synthesizer.

I listend to a cw station at 7,021.80 with the 500 Hz filter. When I 
slowly turned the vfo knop upwards the cw pitch changed as expected. 
When I reached 7,022.00 there was no change up to 7,029.99. Obviously 
the actual receive frequency did not change between 7,022.00 and 7.029.99
I noticed the same with an SSB station at 7,191.80. The receive 
frequency didn't change between 7,192.00 and 7,199.99
Receiving condition were very poor today and I didn't have much time to 
evaluate the fault any further but it seems that this fault exists every 
10kHz at all freuencies xx,xx2.00 to xx,xx9.99

As a first step I pulled every pc board one by one and put it back in 
but it didn't help.

I have not yet downloaded the manual and schematics. This will be the 
next step. I am well aware that the receiver is almost 40 years old. I 
know that it has tantalum capacitors which are prone to failure.

If anybody experienced a similar fault I would appreciate any hint where 
I should start looking.

Thanks in advance for any help.

vy 73 Heinz DH2FA, KM5VT