[R-390] School House bugs

[Roger Ruszkowski]

Craig,
 
A most unbelievable state for a receiver.
 
The theory always was, It was working fine yesterday.
Now it does not work.
There is one and only one thing wrong with it at this time.
Find the problem and fix it.
 
Things in the school house were in awesome good shape.
This is how it looks in the field and this I show we expect you to keep it looking
young man do you under stand me?

Happy to hear you are getting the problems fixed and the receiver restored.

Roger.
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Craig Heaton <hamfish at efn.org>
To: 'Roger Ruszkowski' <flowertime01 at wmconnect.com>; r-390 <r-390 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Mon, Jul 21, 2014 10:17 am
Subject: RE: [R-390] School House bugs


Roger,

Thanks for the reply! Having been to a couple training secessions every year
during the working years, I kinda thought buggy R390's were out there,
somewhere. The Amelco might have been one that was infested, not fixed, then
followed me home. 

What to trouble shoot first was like what comes first the chicken or the
egg. Getting the audio stable let me find other bugs, took a large can of
Raid. Every module had shorts; leads from one component touching another
lead, etc. In the IF deck, the covers had to be removed on the IF
transformers; caps shorted to the inductors. Crystal deck; leads on some of
the mica caps shorted together. RF deck; there were three RF cans with
shorts. One short in the audio deck. 

Still don't understand the need for 5K pots to cure line & local controls,
but it works. (Maybe another rainy day in Oregon)

Craig, 

-----Original Message-----
From: R-390 [mailto:r-390-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Roger
Ruszkowski
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2014 9:56 PM
To: r-390 at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [R-390] School House bugs


Craig,
 
The Fort Devens Mass school house had class rooms.
In each room was a weeks worth of education.
Every Monday you started in a new class room for a year to 18 months.
You had a tool box. TK105 You picked it from your old class room on Monday
and brought it to your new class room.
Each room had ten seats.
Each room had benches, stools, equipment to learn this week and test
equipment needed to maintain equipment to learn this week on each bench.
Ten benches five bugs two of each bug. 
Big grid on the calk board 10 names, 10 positions 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10.
Log your start and stop time. 
You could watch the board and see how the day was going.
The front end of school was theory.
The back end of school was week after week of equipment.
In the equipment weeks you did:
Monday theory of item and play with item.
Tuesday was schematic analysis of item.
Wednesday was find 5 bugs in item on bench Thursday was find 5 more meaner
bugs.
Friday was find 5 more bugs. two from wed, two from thurs and a new one.

There were like plenty of bugs to mix up from week to week.
Bad line audio this week Bad local audio next week.
Bad fuse here. Bad fuse there.
Burnt out lamp.

We had fried tubes for every tube in the item.
We have bad  items for every thing that would plug in, relays caps, tubes,
fuses crystals.
We would plug in 4 bugs and solder a fifth so you only had to solder up two
units a day.
We had meg ohm resistors carefully repainted to solder in as open resistors.
We had every solder joint on a terminal board re soldered so you could not
just eye ball for new solder.
We would open wires in the wire harness plugs to give you a bad wire
harness.
We could mess up clamps, knobs, shafts and miss align any thing that needed
adjustment.

Every student spent 6 months in common theory and test equipment.

A student spent 6 to 12 more months depending on the school three days a
week 6 hours a day at a bench trouble shooting 5 bugs a day on a piece of
gear he had never seen or heard of before Monday. 
R390 school was two weeks. One week alignment. One week bugs.
The first week you got do three alignment semi annual PM procedures.
You had to pass signal to noise on every band. As you got a part procedure
done you asked for an instructor sign off as you demonstrated the step.
An instructor could walk past an R390 on the bench with spline tool and
tweaker never break stride and keep a student busy all day getting that
receiver back in alignment.
 
I got more real hands on education at Fort Devens than any where else in my
life.
I did four years 6 days on two days off in Viet Nam, Korea and Okinawa
applying what I had learned in school.
I did two years teaching a tape recorder week after week after week.

Roger 33C4H