[R-390] R390/Solid State

Thu, 8 Aug 2002 19:56:43 -0400

I bought my 2 R-390A's in completely original condition 18 years ago from a
ham who was a retired AF officer. One is a 1955 Collins and the other is a
Motorola.
He used them for a number of years as he got them from a direct surplus
sale. I've been using them almost daily since I got them and I never had to
replace a tube.
One of my R-392's has been in my possession since 1981 and the person who
owned it before me had it for almost 15 years. It's been in frequent use for
at least 35 years so far and it's still on its original tubes.
Another receiver I own, a 1955 vintage German Siemens E305 professional HF
receiver I got in 1969 and is also frequently used still has the original
Siemens tubes in it and as far as I can tell, it still performs great. I did
an alignment procedure on it in 1981 to make sure everything is according to
the specs...

73, Meir WF2U
Landrum, SC

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	[email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]  On
Behalf Of Bill Smith
Sent:	Thursday, August 08, 2002 7:32 PM
To:	Steve Goode; Michael Young; [email protected]
Subject:	Re: [R-390] R390/Solid State

The last thing you need to worry about wearing out in an R-390/R-390A are
the tubes.  How many have you had to replace so far?  You'll wear out the
knobs before you go though the thousands of hours available in standard tube
life, and the R-390 series treat tubes very gently.

73 de Bill, AB6MT
[email protected]