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Superstar 3900F from France

Chevboy0167

Well-Known Member
Apr 5, 2017
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Ok fellas. Just got a Superstar 3900F from France yesterday. This thing is strange for sure! Looks and acts just like a DX 88 however, the freq. display has 2 decimals. Does not show 27.185. It shows 7.185.0 and it is on freq. with other radios and external freq. counter. Now, inside there is a factory mounted slide switch off of the chassis with 3 wires to it. Has only 2 positions. I have no clue what it does.... Flip it and really nothing happens. Anybody have info or ideas? Where the RB button is on an 88, this rig has DFB. Acts like a noise filter or tone control of sorts. I got nothing. The serial plate says: American CB Dirler SA France,SS 3900. Serial looks to be 200067 and some other French crap. It is in great shape and receives great. Controls tight and respond like they should. Now for the bad, no tx power. Have tx audio. When I open her up, same freq. counter unit as my old 88 that I just fixed. Ok, cool. Now somebody added a little bread board with some components. A VR, 3 resistors, a diode and a transistor NEC A733. 2 wires go to main pc with 1 soldered to Jumper 83 and the other to ground. Then a 12v dc hot off of power switch and some sort of thermistor maybe?? ran under the counter unit with 2 wires. Part looks like a small ceramic disk cap but has 3 colors, red on top, purple middle and yellow on bottom. I remove hot wire to see what happens= R218 near final driver smokes and burns. Crap. I remove this whole assembly out. I replace R218 with 2 ohm metal film I have, apply power and still no TX but R218 stays intact= no burn. Sorry for long post but I may need to send this to good tech. Recommendations as to who can get me up to spec with this strange radio? Thank you gentlemen.
 

never have seen this bread board mod before. there was a mod floating around a few years ago to make the freq counter move one decimal point to show as yours is doing. I searched and can not find that mod any more.some one may have done the mod to get the last digit for the 6 digit counter. I had a galaxy 88 and a voyage 9000 and at the time thought about doing this mod to the counter. just never did it since the floating of the freq did not bother me.
 
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Thanks for the reply sonoma. Yeah the counter mod doesn't bother me, it is actually kind of cool and different. That added board mod does bother me cuz I think it took out the final pre-driver or driver or finals cuz of that resistor that let the magic smoke out. That tells me something is shorted or drawing excessive current in that area. Today I bench tested that added POS. Here is what I found. It must be a temp controlled voltage stabilizer. The disk cap looking thing indeed is a thermistor. It was positioned under the freq. counter module around maybe the PLL or a crystal? But the thermistor is covered in heat shrink so what would be the purpose? Some pics for ya. The large red is 13.8v from power supply, yellow is neg., and small red was soldered to J83 on main PC board near front of rig. Got an idea on what J83 does or controls?20170429_152240.jpg 20170429_152324.jpg
 
It may be. I got no idea. Did another test. Have 12.94v on one leg of rainbow part and 8.32v on the other.
 
How about the factory installed switch... any ideas any one? I have seen said switch in pics of other Dirland and Superstar exports. Has 3 wires, some got to band switch. 20170429_162029.jpg 20170429_162046.jpg
 
Mudduck I have not but will check now. Thank you. Robb, yes it is exactly like an older 88 inside. My initial though was the switch was for channel spacing from Europe to the americas but it is not. Anybody else have experience with Dirland or export french radios???
 

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