[R-1051] Troubleshooting/repairing R-1051 - advice needed

[Nick England]

Hi gang. I am just getting my feet wet in working on the R-1051 and would
like to gather a little knowledge from those more experienced.

Main question (so far) is how do you troubleshoot and repair a 6-pack? Not
having a TS-xxxx as the manual recommends, is it common practice to test in
the receiver with homebrew extender cables made from an old 6-pack? If so,
where do I get an old 6-pack? If not, what do you recommend?

Background -
Actually I am starting with an RT-618A xcvr (part of URC-35A) but it is
mostly an R-1051 and I have several R-1051's in the garage that'll get
moved onto the workbench some day. So.....

First I found and fixed a fair amount of mechanical misalignment in the RF
turret MHz ring - the LC strip contact blades were whacking and bending the
fixed contacts (and sliding over or under rather than through, etc.). Same
problem in the AM-3007 turret. I'm guessing this was the result of someone
trying to pull out a turret without removing the LC strips first. --  Is
this a common problem?

Once I got the turrets all aligned (and fixed some problems in the 28vdc
supply) and I started testing things, smoke started pouring out of the RF
turret when I switched to 26MHz - found that the A26 strip had a short
which was grounding B+. OK, the turret comes apart again and back together
yet another time. I figure that short was just an odd item.

The rcvr had very low sensitivity. RF stages checked OK, but some test
points on the 6-pack weren't showing much of anything on a scope. So I dug
a -1051D out of the garage and swapped in a 6-pack. Voila - rcvr works fine
now. But now I need to fix the original 6-pack.

So, any advice on how to work on this dense collection of circuit boards
and parts will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Nick England K4NYW
www.navy-radio.com