This is for William from Tyler TX.
The Mckinley is done! Ok, William, this was an adventure in reverse engineering kinda-sorta I had to undo some things that must have been done by someone dwelling into the deep dark areas of internet shade tree technology. That being said the radio worked but much of what was done had negative effects rather than positive.
1) Removed the resistor on the board used to modify the AGC circuit essentially it stopped the AGC from functioning at all and when heavy SSB signals were encountered it just went into audio distortion mode. That resistor was removed and the AGC no works as designed
2) Along with the AGC mod, they installed a cap value at the input of the audio amp that mad more noise I think they did it through seat-of-the-pants troubleshooting and found it increased the volume. Anyway, I removed this cap and the audio fell a bit so I checked the cap that was factory and it was bad so after repacing that it fixed the low audio issue and testing the cap showed a very high ESR number which would make sense.
3) Moving right along I found numerous issues with bad connections as such that contributed to a poor result after all those were fixed things the radio started looking like it might be able to be aligned.
4) But first I had to re-do the variable Power circuit that was again red-necked and mounted with one leg of the transistor holding upright. So I mounted that to the side of chassis and redone the wiring, cleaned the control it know works a bit smoother.
5) There was a jumper going from the base lead of the driver to the board it didn't seem to have any need for it so I removed that and put it back to original factory condition.
6) Both the audio amp chip and the regulator chip were replaced at some point "not unusual for a radio of this vintage" but they to were done slopppppppppy so I remounted both and cleaned up the mess.
7) Cleaned all the controls and switches as well as cleaned the entire board and returned it as close as possible to its former glory.
8) There were some electrolytics that I replaced and some switching diodes here and there. Also did some re-routing of wires and such.
Ok know for the images:
The image below shows that when they replaced or resoldered the connections they inadvertently soldered two leads that should not be soldered.
This cap was paralleled across a bad cap simply removed and replaced the bad one
The image below is of the jumper on the Driver ?? removed it and did it right.
The next 2 images are just some before and after you get the idea the entire board looked like the before image it now all looks like the after image.
Ok, that is enough of the images I did include one of the 4 videos but I know need to get on to the next unit I have about 16 more and about 32 more that want to send as soon as I give them the go-ahead. So it's back to the grind.
The 2 radios you hear in the video I restored and/or repaired for them. first was an FT101EE and of course the Galaxy 959 they are both about 8 miles away.
The Mckinley is done! Ok, William, this was an adventure in reverse engineering kinda-sorta I had to undo some things that must have been done by someone dwelling into the deep dark areas of internet shade tree technology. That being said the radio worked but much of what was done had negative effects rather than positive.
1) Removed the resistor on the board used to modify the AGC circuit essentially it stopped the AGC from functioning at all and when heavy SSB signals were encountered it just went into audio distortion mode. That resistor was removed and the AGC no works as designed
2) Along with the AGC mod, they installed a cap value at the input of the audio amp that mad more noise I think they did it through seat-of-the-pants troubleshooting and found it increased the volume. Anyway, I removed this cap and the audio fell a bit so I checked the cap that was factory and it was bad so after repacing that it fixed the low audio issue and testing the cap showed a very high ESR number which would make sense.
3) Moving right along I found numerous issues with bad connections as such that contributed to a poor result after all those were fixed things the radio started looking like it might be able to be aligned.
4) But first I had to re-do the variable Power circuit that was again red-necked and mounted with one leg of the transistor holding upright. So I mounted that to the side of chassis and redone the wiring, cleaned the control it know works a bit smoother.
5) There was a jumper going from the base lead of the driver to the board it didn't seem to have any need for it so I removed that and put it back to original factory condition.
6) Both the audio amp chip and the regulator chip were replaced at some point "not unusual for a radio of this vintage" but they to were done slopppppppppy so I remounted both and cleaned up the mess.
7) Cleaned all the controls and switches as well as cleaned the entire board and returned it as close as possible to its former glory.
8) There were some electrolytics that I replaced and some switching diodes here and there. Also did some re-routing of wires and such.
Ok know for the images:
The image below shows that when they replaced or resoldered the connections they inadvertently soldered two leads that should not be soldered.
This cap was paralleled across a bad cap simply removed and replaced the bad one
The image below is of the jumper on the Driver ?? removed it and did it right.
The next 2 images are just some before and after you get the idea the entire board looked like the before image it now all looks like the after image.
Ok, that is enough of the images I did include one of the 4 videos but I know need to get on to the next unit I have about 16 more and about 32 more that want to send as soon as I give them the go-ahead. So it's back to the grind.
The 2 radios you hear in the video I restored and/or repaired for them. first was an FT101EE and of course the Galaxy 959 they are both about 8 miles away.
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