[Premium-Rx] WJ Repairs

[Peter Gottlieb]

These radios are not especially difficult to repair, especially when the manuals 
are available.  Tantalum capacitor problems are not really "serious" problems, 
just sometimes tedious to re-cap. However, I have found two problems:
1)  Some parts are difficult to find or very expensive.  Example - when Steve 
sold off his repair parts the batch of tantalum capacitors went for a shocking 
amount of money (yes, I know what list price is, but still that was a lot of 
stock and money to sit in inventory).  Another example are chips which have long 
gone obsolete or parts like filters.  Certain old transistors are going bad in 
droves and while no longer available are easily substituted with more modern and 
better replacements (if you know how).
2)  The calibration/adjustment procedures in the manuals are full of errors.  
Some are obvious and easy to correct (wrong pin number to measure) but others 
look like they were copy/pasted from something else and don't make any sense.  
With modern gear such as a VNA I tend to read through a procedure and then make 
my own anyway, especially if their procedure is convoluted.  Better results quicker.

Combined this makes commercial repair very expensive, time consuming and limits 
hobby type repair work.  I know I've successfully repaired quite a number of 
different ones over the years and at this point unless it's a good friend I 
won't take it on.  I have the gear and knowledge to do the work but when I truly 
estimate the time and parts cost the response is always that it is way too 
expensive.  I have heard the exact same thing from some others who are getting 
out, or about to get out of, the high end radio equipment repair business.  It 
is no longer a viable business with most hobbyists who bought the equipment for 
pennies on the dollar and expect repair work to be similarly discounted.

I think what this will do is accentuate the price difference between working and 
non-working sets and those who want a set and have the knowledge and time to dig 
in will have that avenue.  On sets with pluggable boards and modules, swapping 
them out will become the troubleshooting and repair method of choice.  Of course 
the bad boards will end up on ebay as "unable to test" so caveat emptor.

I've seen a lot of radio gear come out of Turkey.  ISTR the US or NATO had a big 
monitoring post there and either closed it down or upgraded extensively and 
scrapped out many tons of gear.  At least they didn't grind it all up.

Peter




On 9/24/2017 12:35 PM, Dan Robinson wrote:
> Wondering if those in the group who still operate WJ
> equipment, and I know you are all out there, know of
> anyone capable of doing the kind of repairs formerly
> done by PCS Associates (Steve Pappin).  We have seen
> a lot of WJ boards and other parts appear from various
> overseas sellers, primarily in Turkey for some reason.  But
> it's obviously hard to tackle serious issues, such as tantulum
> cap failures, and tracking down sources of problems, without
> sufficient equipment to do the job.
> ______________________________________________________________
> Premium-Rx mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/premium-rx
> Help Page: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:Premium-Rx at mailman.qth.net
> Help Contact eMail:  radio at 8zo.com
> Home Page:  http://www.premium-rx.org/
>