[Premium-Rx] WJ 8888-2 synthesizer failure

[Glenn Little WB4UIV]

Has the NiCad battery leaked?

A leaking battery has all but destroyed two 8888B receivers here.

73
Glenn
WB4UIV

At 04:38 PM 7/3/2015, Heinz Breuer wrote:
>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
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Glenn Little                ARRL Technical Specialist   QCWA  LM 28417
Amateur Callsign:  WB4UIV            wb4uiv at arrl.net    AMSAT LM 2178
QTH:  Goose Creek, SC USA (EM92xx)                      SBE ARRL  TAPR
"It is not the class of license that the Amateur holds but the class
of the Amateur that holds the license"
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