[R-390] Heard on my "new" R-390A receiver.

[Barry Hauser]

Hi Phil & Gang
>I don't intend to post these "heard" postings often on this reflector
>(they're more suited to the SWL reflector) but an interesting thing
happened
>this morning while doing my usual early morning news gathering via
>shortwave.

While the SWL reflector is more appropriate, as I recall, interesting
signals received on R-390's are fair game for the list.

<snipped>
>Turns out the antenna switch
>had been left in the VR-5000 position and I was listening on the R-390A
with
>a SHORTED antenna input (unselected receivers are shorted out).  MOST
>receivers when connected to that antenna switch and NOT selected see almost
>NO signals at all, so I guess the R-390A is doing quite well after all 8^)

Yeah -- R-390A's surely work much better when they're not ... sabotaged.
Gee, sometimes we're admittedly stingy antenna-wise, giving 'em only a 2
foot jumper, but shorting them out, well ...
I dunno, Phil, you're great with this stuff, but maybe you ought to hang out
at the beach for a couple of days or something.  You've been turning those
48 tiny screws a bit too long now.

Sounds like another form of  "Oh-no!  Won't power up at all now!  Woe is
me!" syndrome after working on something for days.  Theorize this, analyze
that, suspect this, surmise whatever, but usually it's a case of: -- Power
cord is plugged into the strip, voltmeter is hooked up to strip, strip is
plugged into the Variac, Variac is plugged into extention cord, extention
cord is plugged into ... OOOPS .. nothing -- thin air.  Saying "I knew it
was some kind of high resistance problem!" doesn't help much - still feel
goofy even though no witnesses -- except the radio.

I would suggest working in the garden this afternoon, but there are too many
things crawling around out there with too many moving parts to be safe.
"Phil -- what on earth are you doing with that bug?"  "This millipede is out
of whack -- I'm trying to re-linearize it.  Nope -- still pulls to the
left."

Barry