[R-390] Re: R390/Solid State

[Todd Bigelow - PS]

The gov't made tens of thousands of WWII aircraft too, as well as other
equipment. Granted, they did a better job of destroying them sooner, but
they were still working on destroying the R-390 family not too long ago
too.

Not being one who likes to tell others what to do with their property,
I'd like to suggest that Mike try building his solid state replacement
technology into a 7-9 pin tube- base arrangement or other such
'plug-and-play' things so that the modifications would be easily
reversed when the day comes that Mike no longer owns this radio. It
would likely be more challenging than just tearing into a chassis and
hacking it up, and as well he may solve a future need for tubes as they
become more scarce. Maybe he'd become the Bill Gates of tube
replacements?? Well, that really wasn't a nice thing to say. I
apologize.

Honestly, none of this gear is really "ours" for long. Everything I have
of tube vintage belonged to at least one other person before, who
considered it 'theirs'. I'm sure glad they took as good a care of these
rigs as they did, too. The fellow who sold me my first R-390A passed
away a couple years back, but the radio lives on in the same like-new
condition he sold it to me in.

Mike, we're really not a bad bunch of guys. This list probably contains
the biggest wealth of R-390*(and other) knowledge that you'll find
anywhere. We are focused on preserving and fine-tuning an outstanding 50
year old design that still manages to whoop the hell out of much (most?)
of the newer SS gear. Wouldn't it be more challenging to take some of
the older 'new' techonolgy Yaecomwood receivers and see if you could
eliminate all the phase noise, chuffing, and bring the noise floor down
to something approaching the R-390? I'm certainly not against
experimenting and making new discoveries, but it's going to be difficult
making most of the list members believe that solid-stating an R-390 will
make it 'better'.

de Todd/'Boomer'  KA1KAQ

David Wise wrote:

> > From: Terry O'Laughlin [mailto:terryo@wort-fm.terracom.net]
> >
> > The government made well upwards of 50,000 of these radios.
>
> Nope.  They made that many R390As but far fewer R-390s.
> What was it guys, around 15000?