[R-390] SERIAL 163 FOLLOW UP

[RICHARD MC KINNEY]

I have 2 R390As in my shop right now.  One was GIVEN to me by a ham friend.  The other is to repair for him.  He is a big time collector /trader of old rigs.  I have restored many old radios for him just for the love of doing it.  He kept wanting to pay me for it...I felt I owed him for the fun of working on them.  The serial 163 rig is mine  and it was the one that had the 6BA6 in the bfo slot.  It really doesn't matter to me if the mod was factory or just well done.  I know I'm not going to butcher it up just to convert it back to original.  But in comparing the 2 rigs I see no difference in ssb reception.  His has no product dector mod like mine.  Seems to me like the mod is a lot of work for nothing.  It might of interest to all in what I had to do to repair his.  Problem was it was reading off frequency.  I found the varaible if V701  was tracking 3.455 to 2.472 and not 3.455 to 2.455 as it was supposed to.  I do this by wrapping a coil of wire around the tube and feeding it to an Icom 736 to see it's frequency.  In the manual there is a fix for that and it worked fine.  You have to remove the module and adjust a end point adjustment that allows for aging.  So both rigs are now doing much better.  Thanks to all that helped with input and I hope my info has helped.  73 Rich WB4VFN