We have all had our less than perfect moments. And sometimes others have them, and it benefits us. A fellow I know gave me a Kenwood TS-520. Made noise, he said, but won't receive or transmit. Just
white noise. He also gave me the manual. I put the rig on the bench and he was right - just white noise. Darn. Glanced at the manual to see what I was up against. Uh, is that a missing plug in the rear?
Checked. Yep, no VFO plug. Now I could have told this fellow what happened, and returned the radio to him. But he felt he owed me something anyway, for helping him with his computers. So I made a plug out of
a miniature tube base, and the radio is a frequenty companion.
A guy brought me a very, very nice component stereo receiver one time, to my shop. I did two way radio, but I also did some consumer
product repair. I agreed to look at it. He said there was no sound. It lights up, but zero output. This was a high-end model, probably worth 700 bucks. I put it on the bench after he left the shop. Yep. No
sound. Uh, wait. Isn't there supposed to be a pair of jumpers from the PRE-AMP OUT to the AMP IN? Hmmmm.
Turned the volume completely down, plugged in a set of phono jumpers. Turned it back up.
Slightly. Wonderful sound. I called him and told him to come pick it up. He asked how much. I felt good that day. I told him, just come get it. Nothing wrong with it. One happy dude. I even gave him my
nearly worn out jumpers! Needed a new pair anyway.
I'm a fairly competent auto mechanic. Even on eighties model computerized cars. Traced a problem on my 88 Cherokee that five professional shops with
thousands of diagnostics tools couldn't find. I fixed it. None of them could.
But my old Bronco II was running kinda ragged. Didn't have any power. Had the V6 2.8 engine, and 5 speed OD. Should be
doing pretty good. I adjusted the carb. No improvement. I poked around in it off and on for a week. No luck. Was suspecting bad valves or bad rings. Decided to check the plugs. As I reached for the first
plug wire to pull it, (engine off) I save movement.
Huh? Movement? I tugged at the wire. The distributor rotated! The lock down bolt was loose. Still there, but loose! Reset the timing, locked the
bolt down and the old horse was kicking once again.
Recently, during high winds and cold evenings and humidity figures around six percent (read: static electricity) I reached for a DVD that was in the
computer's DVD recorder. There was a flash, and the DVD recorder went stone dead. Could not eject the disk. Tried rebooting. Computer says nope. that DVD record is plumg darned shot, ripped apart by static
electricity. Next day I was in the city, so I bought a new one. Brought it home and installed it. Worked fine.
Wondering if I could figure out why the other one failed, I put it in a second computer.
Huh? Worked beautifully! The static charged that locked it up had dissipated.
Around that period of time I grabbed a tape out of my combo DVD recorder and VCR. There was a flash, and the tape hung
partway out. Nothing worked. Lights on, but nothing would work, not the VCR or the DVD deck. Nothing. Terribly upset, as this was not a cheapie, I pulled the cover. Got the tape out. Put the machine on my
bench. Not dead, just would not load a tape or a DVD. No movement. Wouldn't run.
Turned it off and went to get the book. Came back and turned it on. It worked beautifully. Good old static done gone
and done it again.
Then just a few days ago, one of the fellows told me my signal into the repeater was terribly noisy, hardly readable. Huh? This is my 50 watt Icom 2000H. I was only running 5 watts
but that darned repeater has never had problems with this rig before. A glance at the meter showed a lot of intermittent action. I kicked it up to 50 watts. Wow, terrible. I shut it down and flipped on the
IC706 and went to the same repeater. All was well.
What the heck? Then I spotted something. Was that a loose PL259? Yes, by gosh, it was!!
We all do it. But the big one in radio got me! I had a
Collins S-Line. 75S3B receiver. For some reason I reached around behind it and unplugged the power cable. I guess I was going to pull the receiver out, I'm not sure. I changed my mind and plugged the 11 pin
cable back in. There was a "blurp" and all was dead. Smelled pretty bad, too.
Pulled the 75S3B again and flipped it upside down on the bench. Several burned parts were quite visible.
Disconnected the power cable and as I did, I saw something missing. Huh? The key on the plug! Yep, I had plugged it in wrong!
The repair wasn't expensive. An audio output tube, and maybe 5 resistors.
Probably cost me ten bucks. And some labor. And some stupid head banging.
Was into the Drake line just last night. I was exceptionally careful! And it still works!
Ed
|
