[R-390] Dayton experience

[DJED1 at aol.com]

I thought I'd share a couple of impressions of my first journey to  Dayton.  
It sounds like some of the list members came away with radios- I  resisted the 
temptation, but had a good time.  Saw a handful of R-390s,  including a nice 
black-face A, and a R-725, as well as the usual R-390s and As.  Looks like 
most went for at or under $500, and all were in good shape including  original 
meters.  I was tempted by the black face, but the thought of  lugging it all day 
made me move on, and it was gone when I returned.
Of equal interest, I stopped at Fair Radio to see their stash of R-390  
stuff.  I got a tour from Gary, who does all the restorations of "checked"  radios. 
 He showed me the stash, which consists of about 5 pallets of blue  stripers, 
and a small number of parts chassis of the non-A.  Gary said he  was having 
trouble finding good modules now, and will probably run out of  checked units 
in a year or so.  LOTS of parts around, but definitely  needing repair.  I 
think Fair does a lot of work (including painting the  front panel) on the checked 
radio for the extra couple of hundred they  get.
The most interesting comment was that Gary has had some success with  
rebuilding the mechanical filters.  He finds that most have a broken wire  in one of 
the transducers, and he can repair or rewind the transducer and then  replace 
the filter in the housing using new foam.  This may be necessary in  the 
future as the filters start to fail more frequently.  
I picked up a BFO coil that I want to use in my external SSB adapter.   While 
Fair gave me the schematic for the current oscillator, I don't have any  
information on which of the three terminals is which.  Can anyone identify  which 
of the terminals is the tap, which is the grid, and which is ground.   Thanks 
for the help.
Ed