MISSED MEETING. For starters, I did not attend the local club meeting has originally planned. I had NCS duties that night for a statewide net and opted to play radio instead.
I began a couple of times to send my thoughts on the new club constitution via e-mail, borrowing heavily from what I wrote in an earlier entry below. I didn't send anyone anything. The truth is that I'm a lone voice, and its probably a better move to just let things roll. The club has wasted a lot of energy over silly debates, and I realized I would just be adding to the silliness. I still believe in the points I made earlier, but those can be addressed later if need be.
I still believe family membership should be an option — if for no other reason than to keep the dues affordable and to create a very welcome “we're glad you're here” atmosphere. The beauty of the new constitution is that it is much easier to amend, so perhaps some of these issues can be addressed in the future.
My wife was disappointed by the club's move to eliminate family memberships. While she doesn't get on the air much, she has supported my being in the club and the club at every turn. Perhaps she should be the one to push for reinstating family membership. To be a members now she'll have to poney up $20, which she won't do.
I've got enough irons in the fire as it is, I don't need to bog down in club politics.
DRAKE DISAPPOINTMENT. My Drake R4A receiver arrived Monday, and its on the desk here in the shack. It's in very good physical condition. Unfortunately it has a problem.
When powered on, it seems to receive just fine for about 3-4 minutes. But as it warms up, something happens. First, the receive frequency begins to shift lower, slowly at first, but then QSY'ing so quickly you can't keep up with it. After it moves about 75 KCs off the correct frequency, the oscillator dies.
You can hear white noise in the phones; all the rigs controls work – you can hear the filtering work, the notch, the RF Gain, etc. It appears that something in the radio's front end is warming up and shutting down.
The one clue I have is that the preselector — which will provide an audible peak of white noise even without the antenna attached — seems to quit working once the rig has its fit. Once the receive quits, the preselector will provide a noise peak, but way off the intended frequency. For example, if you have the rig set to 40 meters, once the RX quits you no longer have a noise peak on 40, but you can tune to one with the preselector on 80. The noise peak is there but there's no received signals from any band being passed through the receiver. Just white noise.
With the calibrator turned on, you can listen to the frequency begin to shift and then take off until it goes nearly silent.
So what's the problem? The block diagram shows the 100 kc crystal calibrator signal is injected right at the antenna input, which means it gets mixed in the IF with everything else. The calibrator is shifting along with the rest of the band when the problem occurs.
The R4A has a solid state VFO oscillator, but there are two stages, the premixer and mixer stages that use vacuum tubes that are worth a look. The receiver works from a cold start, so perhpas its a tube? I think perhaps some tube checking is in order. I can't believe it would be a solid state component changing value so quickly, there's really not much chance for the rig to build any heat outside of a vacuum tube. Hmmm….
I can't really fault the seller, he said he checked it for receive and it worked. Well, it would work for about 3 minutes, and that's probably all the time he took on it. Go figure!
I'm impressed with the receiver's features, and hopefully will also be impressed once the thing is working correctly!
73 es CUL … de KY4Z … dit dit