[Milsurplus] More Russki Radio...

[David Stinson]

At the local surplus outlet (Tanner Electronics in Carrolton; NICE people),
I found these 18-inch log AT&T line cards with a dandy little DC/DC
converter on the end.  These were like my first, but smaller and 
less current, being rated at only 170 mils out.  That was fine by me,
since at the tip-top, the radio is drawing less than 20 mils:

http://home.netcom.com/~arc5/usp/USP034.JPG

I pulled three of the converters and built a shield box just
for them, with some surplus EMI filters 
and feed-thru caps in and out of the 
box.  I'm only using two of the converters, but can 
jump up to 90 volts out by simply adding two jumpers:

http://home.netcom.com/~arc5/usp/USP%20032.JPG

I took the old converter mess out of the power/audio chassis
and installed the shield box in that place:

http://home.netcom.com/~arc5/usp/USP051.JPG

I know- I could compress everything into a much smaller box 
and put the speaker in there, too, but have you priced metal 
project boxes lately? Yeow!  That one with the converters in
it was over eight bucks.  Anyone got a better price on boxes?

Anyways- during bench tests, 
the converter ran for hours at 25 mils out without 
even breaking a sweat. Input current at 13.5 volts was 180 mils.
I installed it and have run it all night and all this morning.
99% of my birdies have flown away.  
The very few left (none in the ham bands)
are so low level; you have to hunt for them to find them.
It was well worth the extra work.
It's so darn rare that I get the time to build anything,
and I'm pleased how this turned out.  I'll compact it all into one
small power/speaker box one of these days.  It'll have to do
as-is for now- duty calls.

On another note: the quality of the radio build.
I've have time to look deeper since I first opened the radio,
and the problems with the old Soviet system 
and it's broken work ethic have begun to show.
Band Two was dead when I got the radio.  I finally 
got around to trouble-shooting that and found that 
a wire to the antenna coil was pinched between the coil 
shield and the chassis, shorting out the antenna.
When the worker screwed the shield down, he 
didn't take the time to check his work.  Band Two 
could never have operated; it was shipped like this.
Works now :).
Another:  The top coil deck is screwed to the chassis with 
several short, counter-sunk screws, then the coil shields are
placed over the coils and screwed to this deck,
partially covering the countersunk screw heads.
Well, the deck is connected to the chassis with exactly 
*one* countersunk screw.  The other holes are empty
and it had to have been shipped in this condition.
I'll fix that later. 

Pity that such nice, functional engineering would be tripped-up
by the corrosion of worker's attitudes and societal decay
that is inevitable under Socialism.  I still like the radio, though.

73 Dave S.