Time flies!

Years go on and on... After close to 3000 amateur radio repairs (and some test equipment ones), I still find from time to time some real challenges. And my interest to learn more on the RF field are still here. So, I guess, that means all is going fine :-)

I have upgraded my lab quite a bit on last years. Here you have some pictures of the different parts of it. Please, don't be too hard telling me some areas are too crowded, I know and am working on that!

LAB1 is where I develop most of my dayly repair work. You never have too many displays on hand:

And it is also my main ham radio station (yes, hidden below some layers right now). This is half ot it. The other half is still more hidden:

LAB2 is where older (mostly tubed) ham gear is located, along an auxiliary workbench:

Then LAB3 is the R&D area:

This is it for the in-house area. There is more outside it, but it is now too crowded to be shown ;-)

Well, back to repair!!!

See you soon.

73 Jose EB5AGV

A new repair project: Collins 30L-1 amplifier

Well, sometimes dreams come true... as it was the day when a ham friend offered a non working Collins 30L-1 amplifier. It was missing some parts (tubes included), but overall it was pretty fine and obviously repairable.

Here you have some pictures of it:

Since I got my S-line back in 1997 or so and then my KWM-2A in 1998, I was looking for a fixer-upper 30L-1... and now it has arrived. Great!!!


I have started a new page on my WEB to deal with its restoration:

EB5AGV's Workbench: Collins 30L-1 restoration

I am actively working to find missing parts and hope to complete the write up as repair progresses.

Yes, I am a happy camper :-)!

73 JOSE EB5AGV

Happy New Year!

Hi all,

I am sorry for the lack of posts. As you could imagine, that means that I am still pretty busy with the radio repairs. I have been able, though, to regain some of the lost fun factor, by filtering better what I take to repair and also by scheduling some of my own equipment repairs mixed with the other ones. As a sample, I am now working on two large test equipment projects, which will be soon appear here as sepparate posts. So life goes on :-)!

I hope all of you have a nice 2012 which fullfills your best expectations.

Sincerely,

JOSE

The Fun Factor

Sorry if this is not a technical post, but it is closely related with my amateur radio equipment repairs.
 
Back when I began to fix my own radios, at the end of the 1990s, it was a treat for me to get them working again. It was so nice that I began to buy nonworking radios just for the fun of fixing them. So the Fun Factor back then was high.

Then, some people around (other local hams) needed to fix their own rigs and I began to fix rigs for free for other people. Soon I found that there was too much work to do and, as a way to keep the flow controlled, I began to get some cash from the repairs. So far, so good: Fun Factor was again at a reasonable level, if not so high than before.

But now, some years later, I find myself overflown by rigs to fix and, luckily only sometimes, also by angry people who want the work done NOW. And CHEAP. So, steadily but irremissibly, the Fun Factor has gone down and down and down... and now is close to zero. I have almost completely stopped to use my own rigs and, seldomly, fix my own nonworking rigs (which I have in large quantity, waiting for care). So I am fixing other people rigs about 95% of my hobby time and just a 5% of the time is devoted to, for example, write on this BLOG (now you can understand why it has so few updates!)

But I have taken a decision: I want the Fun Factor back. So I plan to carefully filter what I am going to fix for other people. No more bulb changing, simple mods or even just admitting to fix abused rigs. I am sorry, this is not an NPO. I want to use my hobby time to learn about RF circuits, operate my radio station and fix my rigs. And, then, fix some other people rigs. But not the opposite!

Sorry for these ramblings but I needed to write this down so it will be an unbreakable decision. You will know if I succeed by the number of posts here!

Thanks for reading :-)

73 JOSE EB5AGV

Back to SATs! (2)

Well, there were some problems with my antenna setup of last week... one of the problems is that I have replaced the sepparate rotor controls (Yaesu G-400RC and Kenpro KR-500) for a all-in-one Yaesu G-5600B (note that I have replaced only the control box, which I bought used some years ago). I have done this in order to control the rotors from the PC easily, as the G-5600B control includes internal relays and has buffered positioning signals.

But one problem is that it is a South referenced control... and my antennas were North referenced. This was not hard to fix :-)

Then a worse problem arised, as there was some miscalculation on the 2m elevation antenna and one director collided with the 6m boom from about 50º elevation... not a good thing!

In order to fix the bent element, I needed to access to the 2m Yagi. But it was too far to reach. So I modified the antenna position by displacing the elevation boom. Current positioning is shown on next picture, with the elevation antennas pointing to sky:

I have also reshuffled the rigs on my main radio station position, so now I have a rig devoted to SATs (Yaesu FT-847), another for Earth work :-) (Yaesu FT-736R) and another for local work (Kenwood TS-790E). Of course, all of them could be used in the others roles, but this is my first approach.

I have ordered an AMSAT-UK LVB Tracker Kit (I have ordered the cheapest one, as I plan to do a custom case and add my own display and buttons) and will work also on the FT-847 CAT control from a tracking program (I will look for a program which cares about Doppler)

So, all in all, things are progressing!

73 JOSE EB5AGV

Back to SATs!

Well, not yet, but, after 10 years without elevation antennas, they are back in my tower !

Here you have a picture of the installation done during this weekend. Now is the turn for the tracking interface... more to come!!!

73 JOSE EB5AGV

Yaesu FT-1000MP MkV repair

I have added a new page to my WEB about the repair of a seriously ill Yaesu FT-1000MP MKV


You can check it at:

http://jvgavila.com/ft1000mpv.htm

73 JOSE EB5AGV

R&S NV 1/156 VHF Multi-coupler

This is one project I had stored for a long time... I got the unit some time ago and worked on it to fix some transport damage and clean it:

EB5AGV's Workbench: Rohde & Schwarz NV 1/156 VHF MULTI-COUPLER repair

But, as I said in that page, it was deaf and, suspiciously, one of the tubes, an EC80 UHF triode, measured low in the unit's own multi-meter (a great idea, BTW)

Finally, I got some EC80 spares and was able to check it. Wow!!!. This unit was manufactured in 1966 so it is 44 years old (2 more than myself, hi!). But it still works fine and, even if its noise figure is for sure higher than the modern equivalent, as it is specified from 100 to 156MHz, it is perfectly usable for FM broadcasting, monitoring air band (around 120MHz) and, of course, 2 meters ham band.

Here you have one picture of the unit, still cover less, connected to two rigs:



The multi-coupler has 5 outputs so I will add more rigs to it and use as a monitoring system.

It is great to mix old technology with 21st century rigs :-)

73 JOSE EB5AGV

Welcome to RadioRepair BLOG!

Well, the aim of this blog is to help fellow Amateur Radio people to fix their rigs. I will publish my repair works so everyone can benefit and comment about them.

I have a WEB page since 1997 where you can find lots of information of my repairs:

EB5AGV WEB

I will start to place content here in short time so, please, keep tuned!

73 JOSE - EB5AGV