[R-390] When was the last time the Y2K manual was updated?

[Roger Ruszkowski]

Jerry Stern, The Y2K manual was last updated prior to Y2K. Y2K occurred some 50 years after the initial release of  the original military maintenance manuals. The receivers are over 50 years old. The original manuals are over 50 years old. One would think that after 50 years the problems in the original documents would be known and the Y2K manual addressed all the then known traps young minds can not read around and get past by them selves. How much has changed in electronics in the last 19 years that impacts these 50 year old receivers? (capacitors) Every thing we imagined we needed to know to keep the receivers running was included in the Y2K manual. I my self have been reading and contributing to the R390 reflector for over 25 years and I am still a new kid in this group. Dave was just asking some logical questions about IF deck input impedance. We just never got around to this subject as a science project worthy of investigation. We are not engineers, we are maintainers. Engineering questions are educational and entertaining.   ASA was sending 10 men a week to the field as receiver repairmen. A first term enlistment yielded 2 years of 1000 guys on the bench. Another 1000 guys were second term or lifers and still doing preventative maintenance on the bench. We were always under strength in ratio of repairmen to items on the property book needing maintenance. I gave a receiver four hours once every six months so my monthly maintenance follow ups were a walk by and inspect no action required.My pair of semi's  of the night came into the shop passing requirements. Then they were  dusted out, washed up, lubricated, cherry picked, and aligned to be used for another 6 months 24 x 7.  ASA receivers lived between very good and excellent.   The R390/A manuals said you needed a R390 manual because certain procedures were the same on both receivers and the test steps were not reproduced in the R390/A manual. TRUE.R390 manual had two whole sections missing in some editions. We had R390 radio repairmen in the field maintaining receivers with no documents for some setups. You paid attention in the class room to what was being taught on the black board. You followed procedures taught by senior repairmen in the field station. The Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Embassy and signal corps use of the receivers for RTTY communications were all separate from the spook ASA use of the receivers. In any year in the 50's and 60's the military had 10,000 communication system repair persons. And ten times as many operators passing  RTTY traffic. There are likely a 100,000 vets  who served some time between 50 and 70 as radio repairman and could now care less about an R390 receiver or the transmitter's or the RTTY hardware. Tish, Perry, and other, have been keeping a log of ideas to add to the Y2K manual. It is a volunteer labor of love for a very small group of people who will use the document twice a year for dust and tweak maintenance. There are counters all over the web site and the number of looks, and downloads are known. We know our audience.  Chuck did the R390/A on VHS cassettes. These still exist and are available used. If you were in a class room with Chuck and a receiver was on the bench you would not learn more than what Chuck has presented on the tapes.The format may be dated but the content is still best on planet. Chuck has more time on tape than students actually received in school house training to cover the same material. Jerry there is just not enough of us to donate this up to the next level. It will not sell to cover cost. R390's are not the only hobby item in this class of existence. The qth.net reflector is here and we are the volunteer Liberian's on duty at the r-390 at mailman.qth.net, R390 help desk answering questions.The R390.net web site is only one of the current library shelves for the subject of R390. Well cataloged on Google and available to the world.The reflector is the Library and R390 is only one specialty niche in the technical Library system.We maintain our own help desk.Nothing else in the world is backed with Pearls of Wisdom the way Wei-Li had backed the R390 and R390/A receivers. Back to the numbers, once upon a time some 300 plus R390 owners were looking at the archives once a month or better just to see what the blog was. So the cast of owner operator's who have just read on the archives and asked for a download is a small (4000) community who is known and profiled. The reflector and the web pages meet the needs of R390 owners with robust support and real people who can type in sentences. Many owners dropped in long enough to get their receiver operating and have been doing well with out us every since. Go read on the serial number list for an idea of how many receivers were built. The slugs of serial numbers listed as being owned by a reflector readers give us ideas of where the different production runs went into service. And were later surplused out of use.Strange as it may be we R390 owner operators know more about our selves as a group of like minded people engaged in a radio hobby than many other humans.  Jerry, We are logging and updating every day right here in good response time. This is the bleeding edge R390 knowledge desk on Planet Earth. From Pearls to new Y2K is first class technical writing. We all want it.Twenty five years and I still can not write it well. But we have more than any one else. Spring is coming and cabin fever has set in. Roger.