[SignalOne] Transmit Woo Hoo!

[jerry]

All,

   Coming down this morning with a fresh head, I decided to look at the 
main current symptom.  No drive, no plate current.  Popped the cover off 
the PA...would you look at that!  The coax has come loose from the 
control grid!
I had opened it up to install a ferrite bead, and tacked it back in 
place.  The tack had come loose, and the solder
looked crystallized.  Gets pretty hot in there...

   So I heated the lug, sucked it clean, heated the end of the coax, 
sucked it clean, poked the wire in the hole, crimped it down and 
soldered it properly.

   Tried the radio out.  What's this?  Full output on 40M with a quarter 
turn of the OUTPUT knob?  Yay!  136W on 10M?  Yay!

   Also the intermittant switching to transmit has gone away.  Has it 
really?  Nope, it still does that.

   I took the RF driver board out again.  Moved the cap I'd tacked under 
the card on the T/R line so it couldn't touch anything.  Don't think 
it's the problem.  Removed the tacked on connector to the Tube coax, 
cleaned it, spread it apart,
crimped and soldered it properly to the coax, and put on new shrink 
tubing for mechanical support.

   Back it went.  I guess I didn't break anything this time, because the 
radio is performing well.  Adjusted the tube
bias and ALC per the manual.

   The intermittant going into transmit thing seems to have something to 
do with VOX.  Because it goes into transmit,
and then back into receive in a moment - like a capacitor timing out.

   I'm really looking forward to finishing this up - the intermittant 
transmit thing, the sidetone-always-on-in-CW-modes thing, and I'll be 
ready to put it back into its pretty case.  Oh, and a thorough 
alignment.  And get the broadband
caps adjusted on all bands.  And a new meter light.  And....

   The pretty case is missing one rear foot.  I don't see that as any big 
deal;  I can surely dig up a couple of generic
equipment feet of reasonable height.

   Got a CW filter coming in today's UPS.  Bought it from the same Ebay 
vendor as the radio.  Who knows, it might be this radio's filter that he 
removed :).

                           - Jerry, KF6VB