Holy Moly!
The Ranger Longhorn Superior N6.
Only thing longer than the name is the price. I'll leave looking that up to anyone who is interested. I don't sell these, I only convert, er "un-cripple" them.
There is a short red wire on the solder side of the pc board. No picture, because you don't want to mess with it. It powers the clarifier. Oddly enough, the clarifier controls transmit and receive together, so no mod is needed. Kinda like a real ham radio.
The radio is 'crippled' to skip 11 meters by clipping a resistor on the back of the channel-selector circuit board. This makes it legal to import and distribute.
Here's the wide view.
Here's the resistor in question.
Sometimes they just clip the long lead and there is enough slack to just lap-solder the ends back together. This one was different and had a long gap in the cut lead wire.
Rather than try to remove the resistor to replace it altogether, I chose to unsolder only the short lead and replace it with a longer piece of bare wire.
Looked like a lot less trouble than removing that resistor.
There are some oddities in this one. Looks as if obtaining enough of the old through-the-hole parts to populate this circuit board is no longer possible. The tiny green glass-epoxy standup boards here are adapters to use surface-mount transistors and diodes that can be bought in quantity to replace the old parts that had two or three wire legs.
Makes me wonder how long before these tiny adapters start to show up on fleabay.
The radio portion of this monster is the "X9" model. The setup here with the RT1 and RT6 incognito MOSFETs sounds okay on sideband, but only with the "high" button on the front popped out, running "barefoot". Gets you over 100 Watt peaks AM if the AMC is turned up, and about 70 Watts PEP SSB without flattopping.
The first of the X9 radios I saw sounded awful on sideband. They seem to have figured that out in the meantime.
But only with the 400-Watt amplifier switched off with the front-panel pushbutton.
The power amplifier will flattop with this much drive from the radio. But that's not what makes the 400-Watt side sound terrible.
There is insufficient bias on either the two 9530 driver transistors.
Or the four final transistors.
Or both.
Sounds fine on AM with 400-Watt peaks.
The ERF9530 wasn't what I expected to see in this thing. I'd still like to know what the part number was when the transistor factory made them. Just the same, what's wrong with this picture?
The radio is driving roughly 100 Watts peak into two of these 9530 transistors. And it takes two of them to driver four more and get 100 Watt peaks per transistor from that stage?
Makes it appear that the ERF9530 has a power gain between two and four, maybe? Not the kind of multiplying factor I expect from a RF transistor. Hmmm.
Had me wondering about a radio made in Malaysia with transistors made most-likely in China, relabeled in the USA and then shipped to a factory in Malaysia?
Sounds unlikely.
Eric has abandoned the "EKL" name brand and uses the letter "P" inside a shield outline as the Palomar logo.
Does lead me to suspect that he's finally buying enough of them to have the factory print his number on them before they leave the transistor factory. If you buy enough of them they'll print whatever you like on the part. This practice has been around forever, typically called a "house" number. The idea is to keep all replacement part sales "in-house" by removing the industry-standard identification from the part.
That would seem to make more sense. The Palomar type number and logo get printed on the part when it's made and shipped directly to Melaka, Malaysia where RCI's factory is located.
The letter at the beginning of the serial number indicates the factory where the radio originates. "M" is Malaysia. "V" is Vietnam. All the radios with Ranger's name on the outside seem to be coming from Malaysia. The Galaxy and Connex brand radios RCI makes are coming from Vietnam.
One last rant concerns a trimpot that is marked VR18, "SSB Limits". I call it the WTF control. Can't figure out what it's meant to accomplish. Just garbles up the sideband transmit audio unless you turn it full clockwise. It has to have some reason to be there, but I don't see it. The actual sideband ALC control is the white trimpot immediately to the left of VR18, marked VR14. Also says "SSB power" but the "SSB" is obscured behind the pot seen from this angle.
VR18 gets set like any other ALC control, to keep the voice peaks spiky-looking on the 'scope, below the flat top level.
I won't bad-mouth this model. Too much like biting the hand that feeds me. But no design is perfect, so caveat emptor.
73
The Ranger Longhorn Superior N6.
Only thing longer than the name is the price. I'll leave looking that up to anyone who is interested. I don't sell these, I only convert, er "un-cripple" them.
There is a short red wire on the solder side of the pc board. No picture, because you don't want to mess with it. It powers the clarifier. Oddly enough, the clarifier controls transmit and receive together, so no mod is needed. Kinda like a real ham radio.
The radio is 'crippled' to skip 11 meters by clipping a resistor on the back of the channel-selector circuit board. This makes it legal to import and distribute.
Here's the wide view.
Here's the resistor in question.
Sometimes they just clip the long lead and there is enough slack to just lap-solder the ends back together. This one was different and had a long gap in the cut lead wire.
Rather than try to remove the resistor to replace it altogether, I chose to unsolder only the short lead and replace it with a longer piece of bare wire.
Looked like a lot less trouble than removing that resistor.
There are some oddities in this one. Looks as if obtaining enough of the old through-the-hole parts to populate this circuit board is no longer possible. The tiny green glass-epoxy standup boards here are adapters to use surface-mount transistors and diodes that can be bought in quantity to replace the old parts that had two or three wire legs.
Makes me wonder how long before these tiny adapters start to show up on fleabay.
The radio portion of this monster is the "X9" model. The setup here with the RT1 and RT6 incognito MOSFETs sounds okay on sideband, but only with the "high" button on the front popped out, running "barefoot". Gets you over 100 Watt peaks AM if the AMC is turned up, and about 70 Watts PEP SSB without flattopping.
The first of the X9 radios I saw sounded awful on sideband. They seem to have figured that out in the meantime.
But only with the 400-Watt amplifier switched off with the front-panel pushbutton.
The power amplifier will flattop with this much drive from the radio. But that's not what makes the 400-Watt side sound terrible.
There is insufficient bias on either the two 9530 driver transistors.
Or the four final transistors.
Or both.
Sounds fine on AM with 400-Watt peaks.
The ERF9530 wasn't what I expected to see in this thing. I'd still like to know what the part number was when the transistor factory made them. Just the same, what's wrong with this picture?
The radio is driving roughly 100 Watts peak into two of these 9530 transistors. And it takes two of them to driver four more and get 100 Watt peaks per transistor from that stage?
Makes it appear that the ERF9530 has a power gain between two and four, maybe? Not the kind of multiplying factor I expect from a RF transistor. Hmmm.
Had me wondering about a radio made in Malaysia with transistors made most-likely in China, relabeled in the USA and then shipped to a factory in Malaysia?
Sounds unlikely.
Eric has abandoned the "EKL" name brand and uses the letter "P" inside a shield outline as the Palomar logo.
Does lead me to suspect that he's finally buying enough of them to have the factory print his number on them before they leave the transistor factory. If you buy enough of them they'll print whatever you like on the part. This practice has been around forever, typically called a "house" number. The idea is to keep all replacement part sales "in-house" by removing the industry-standard identification from the part.
That would seem to make more sense. The Palomar type number and logo get printed on the part when it's made and shipped directly to Melaka, Malaysia where RCI's factory is located.
The letter at the beginning of the serial number indicates the factory where the radio originates. "M" is Malaysia. "V" is Vietnam. All the radios with Ranger's name on the outside seem to be coming from Malaysia. The Galaxy and Connex brand radios RCI makes are coming from Vietnam.
One last rant concerns a trimpot that is marked VR18, "SSB Limits". I call it the WTF control. Can't figure out what it's meant to accomplish. Just garbles up the sideband transmit audio unless you turn it full clockwise. It has to have some reason to be there, but I don't see it. The actual sideband ALC control is the white trimpot immediately to the left of VR18, marked VR14. Also says "SSB power" but the "SSB" is obscured behind the pot seen from this angle.
VR18 gets set like any other ALC control, to keep the voice peaks spiky-looking on the 'scope, below the flat top level.
I won't bad-mouth this model. Too much like biting the hand that feeds me. But no design is perfect, so caveat emptor.
73
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