[R-390] New R390

[jgedde at optonline.net]

Hiya all,

My new to me R390 arrived Friday.  SN 2445.  It's a bit of a needing TLC
beast, but as of tonight I got it receiving stations.  A lot more to do, but
I'm making progress....  This time I'll post a "before picture."  It's not
strictly a "before" photo since I've done a lot of cleaning, but it's how
she stands right now.  Ugly but not for long...

I fixed the power regulator circuit, aligned the IF, fixed the AF deck.  A
lot of burned up and/or broken resistors as a result of a tube failure
(cracked glass and short).  Right now, the RF stage is woefully out of
whack, the unit jumps frequency (by 30 kHz or so) randomly (cause TBD), the
squelch doesn't work, the antenna relay is marginal, an intermittent issue
where it goes dead until I cycle power, or it starts humming bad until I
cycle power (almost like a LF oscillation), etc.    I thinks it's a B+
oscillation in the regulator.  I'll get it sorted out. 

So far my observations are that the R390 has smoother audio and is much more
stable (apart from the frequency jumping) than my R390A which allows ECSS on
the R390 which I can't do for more than a short time on the R390A.  But as a
negative, the R390 puts out an huge amount of heat from the regulators!
Definitely a winter radio.  Heats the room.  Apart from that my complaints
are that the R390 is not as easy to work on as the R390A.  Not even close.

John
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