Pardon my 1970s REO Speedwagon reference pun, but sometimes you have to go with the low-hanging fruit (or in this case, puns).
Tomorrow my plans are to do some maintenance on the roller inductors on my antenna tuners — mainly just cleaning the inductor coils and the roller mechanism. On the MFJ 989 tuner I recently repaired and put in place in the shack, I’m finding some intermittent contacts when moving the roller. My hope is that a thorough cleaning will take care of the issues.
I figure while I’m at it, I’ll clean the roller coils on the MFJ-969 I have here in Studio B (library shack), and take a gander at the Heathkit SA-2060s — the one with functioning meter and the one that doesn’t have metering. In the past I have cleaned the roller with a pencil eraser, which basically polished the coils and rubbed off any tarnish or other crud. The Heathkit tuners really are the bomb.
My wife will be out of town all day tomorrow so I’ll have some time to pull the covers off several tuners and polish/clean the coils.
And speaking of tuners, I had a lapse of common sense last weekend and bought a homebrew antenna tuner, one of several that have been listed on eBay recently.
The tuner pictured above was apparently built by Bill Tuck, K5OCX. He apparently has been a silent key for quite a while, his license doesn’t even show up in the FCC license archive. I did find him mentioned in just a couple of places on the web — in an Oklahoma CW net report, noting his return to a state CW net. A quote from him in support of contesting was also used in about 1965.
The tuner could use some clean up, but it appears to be well-designed and solid. Bill crafted an SWR bridge that if it is intact, should work fine.
From the inside view you can see the tuner has some substantial components. I got the thing for a song, its not like I actually NEED another antenna tuner, of course. The one thing the tuner lacks is a 4:1 balun, and I’m shopping for a balun (or a kit to make my own) to add either inside or outside the tuner.
NOT-A-KENT UPDATE. I’ve been playing with the Kent iambic look-alike key, and I have to say it has a good feel to it. The angled contact arms are the biggest difference in the design. I have not wired it up yet, like a true Kent, the key lacks terminals, so you have to hardwire it to the cable. That’s not a problem, but I don’t have a suitable cable to use for it. I’ll have to get some from eBay. I usually buy six-foot stereo audio jumpers and cut them in half, and I suspect that’s what I’ll do — the ones with the 3.5 mm or 1/4-inch plugs already installed.
CRAPPY BANDS. I’ve not been able to check in on the Georgeia CW net for a while; most nights I can barely copy the NCS. What happened to those great winter band conditions on 80?? I’m still waiting, hi hi!
Have a great weekend … they’re predicting storms and rain here … a good weekend to do PM on antenna tuners!