[Today’s run: 3 miles]
We had a nice Thanksgiving meal today, had relatives over. It was a very nice day.
On the radio front, I worked some more on the old National NCX-5. Everything was running ok but it was giving me a zoop zoop chirp on CW. I spent some time looking at the VFO. There was about a 2 hertz change in the VFO when I keyed up.
Long ago, when I first got this thing, one of the big problems was that it changed frequency from transmit to receive. At that time it was changing something like 2 kHz. I finally narrowed it down to a capacitor in the VFO buffer circuit. The schematic says ’10’. Today I was looking at that and I noticed that the one I had put in there (probably in 2002) was really a 1oo pf, not a 10 pf. (!)
I replaced that one with a real 10 pf capacitor. No more T/R frequency shift! I was elated.
But another problem now. Some time after that was working I now have no receive noise on SSB or CW, only on AM. And, I am no longer getting any output on transmit. I know that was working just a few minutes ago. I have either burned something up or messed it up somehow.
After some more playing around I had nothing coming out of the VFO. That was the little zener that I had put in as a voltage stabilizer (in trying to fix the T/R problem). It shorted out. Take that out, now I have VFO and I have receive on AM again. Still no receive on SSB/CW and no transmit.
I need to check some of the fundamental voltages, make sure I have the basics covered. I hope I haven’t broken something important!