What a busy month December is! I thought I had gotten away from that when I resigned as the Radio Production Director nearly three years ago! Christmas was great this year. We had quite a few family members gather at my brother-in-law’s house, which included several children, and the best part, NO CHAOS! The kids were actually well-behaved!
That having been said, I haven’t been able to work on the 6 Meter AM rig as much as I would have liked to. I did replace the final tube in the Gooney Box. I also replaced the tuning lamp in the 6 Meter Amplifier. That didn’t solve the problem of me being able to properly tune the antenna.
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So, I need to replace the capacitor that adjusts the brilliancy of the bulb according to the tuning. Can you believe that I can’t find a small 25 Pico Farad capacitor anywhere?! So, I had to resort to ordering them online from Allelectronics.com, which is fine because I love doing business with them! Hopefully, they’ll be here on Saturday. To tide you over, here is a picture of the sexy 2E26 final tube that I had to replace in the Gooney Box. Happy New Year, everyone! Updates will follow. (Tags: ) Posted in,,, .
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on a Gonset Communicator 6 Meter VHF Amplifier (Model 3065). It’s companion is the Gonset Communicator III 6 Meter AM Transmitter-Receiver, or “The Gooney Box.” This rig isn’t nearly as complicated as the Central Electronics 100V Transmitter that I attempted to work on, but it’s been a fun challenge, nonetheless.
The first thing I decided to do was clean it up. It was VERY dirty. It had been sitting in storage for awhile and accumulated quite a bit of dust. It really wasn’t that hard to clean, and it didn’t even take that long. I was rather impressed at how much better it looked after taking a damp rag to it! Next, I decided to take the transmitter and receiver portions of the radio out and do the visual safety inspection before powering it up.
Much to my surprise, everything looked in tact. The “black beauties,” or “black uglies” as they are referred to because they are prone to failure, appeared to be in good shape, too.
(They’ll probably need to be replaced at some point, but I wasn’t concerned about that right now). I cleaned things up a bit as well, and lubricated all of the variable capacitors. I also cleaned up all of the knobs and switches to make it look more presentable. The next step was to make the power adapter for the internal power supply. Once the 12-pin Cinch Jones connectors came in, I looked at them and thought to myself: Piece of cake! Those three words came back to haunt me later!
Since I do have a 12 VDC power supply that powers my current rig, I decided to wire the plug for DC as opposed to AC. I looked at the schematic, and noticed that the DC plug was going to be harder to configure than the AC plug, but decided to go for it anyway. After three hours of successfully attempting to make the plug, four words came to mind: What a train wreck!
The rig did power up, but it never did get very warm, and I couldn’t get any audio to come out of the speakers. At this point, I figured the rig was wired for 6 VDC instead of 12 VDC. I don’t solder as well as I’d like to, and I really didn’t want to tear apart the power supply. Plus, it was going to be more of a hassle for me to change power cords on my existing DC power supply when I wanted to use the 6 meter rig as opposed to my dual band rig.
So, since I ordered two Cinch Jones connectors, I decided to convert the other one for AC use. That was much easier! It took me a third of the time to properly wire the AC connection than the DC connection.
I plugged the Cinch Jones plug into the back of the Gooney Box, and applied power to the rig. And now, the moment of truth: I flipped the switch, and the Gooney Box came to life! After making sure the rig was going to be operational, and no smoke was rising from the cabinet, I turned the volume up a bit to see if I could hear static, I did, and was very impressed! I left the Gooney Box on for awhile just to make sure that it wouldn’t do anything unexpected, like catch fire! I played around with the lamp switch (yes, you can turn the lamps that illuminate the meters and tuning scale on and off), played with the tuning knob, the crystal knob, and even got adventurous and put a dummy load (a light bulb) on the transmitter and tried tuning it up.
The relays worked well, and the bulb did light up a bit. The next thing I tried to do was hook up the Push-to-talk microphone.
I plugged it in, and tried it out. I decided to look at how the plug was wired and see if there was a loose connection. As it turns out, the push-to-talk wire had been broken. I figured I’d redo the connections, but that also proved to be more of a challenge.
No problem, I’ll just replace the plug, I thought to myself. So I went to Stan’s TV and Appliance to see if I could find the proper plug.
The gentleman behind the counter didn’t have the plug I was looking for, as it’s designed a bit differently, but was very knowledgeable and even gave me some suggestions as to what I could do to work around my predicament. I proudly went home and proceeded to go to work. I resoldered the connections, and plugged the mic into the radio.
Still, nothing. Since it was pretty cheap microphone, I decided to order a replacement microphone, just to see if this one was defective. (I can still use the parts from the other microphone, particularly the carbon portion of the microphone).
The new mic came in on Friday, and I’m happy to report that the newer mic works. I also decided to see if I could get the amplifier to work. So, I plugged the rig directly into the amplifier, and hooked a dummy load up to the amp. The relays did click, but I couldn’t get the linear amp to crank out any RF. I decided to clean the relay contacts in the amplifier, and lubricate the blower once more, as I must not have oiled it well enough the first time around. The relays do work better, but I still couldn’t get it to generate RF. The blower, however, runs much quieter!
I decided to turn my attention to the transmitter in the Gooney Box. Upon further testing, it appears that the Gooney Box was putting out less than a watt of power. The amplifier needs at least three watts of input power to excite the amplifier. What happened?
I’m not sure, but I think I know what happened. I’ve been using a 40-watt light bulb as a dummy load on the Gooney Box. Upon further inspection, the filament in the bulb had gone bad. I must have dropped it, or it must have hit the side of the case too hard. I must have applied power to the transmitter with a mismatched load, which may have damaged the final tube. That’s my theory, and it makes sense. I was able to find a 2E26 tube on eBay for less than $5.00.
I ordered two, just in case I ever need an extra. I shopped around at other distributors, and $5.00 seems to be the average going rate for the 2E26.
There still must be quite a few of them around. So, now, I’m just waiting for the 2E26 tube to arrive. Once it does, I’ll be able to conduct further tests on the Gooney Box. My 6 Meter inverted-v antenna arrived last week as well. I can’t use that until Christmas, however, as my wife wants to wrap it up for me!
I think I’ve found a good way to mount it using my existing mast! More to follow when the tubes arrive! Posted in,,, .
After deciding to give “Tank” a new home, I decided to head down to the basement and see which other radios I could potentially fix up. The one that was on my mind, was the “Gooney Box.” Actually, I didn’t have everything I needed to fix the Gooney Box yet, but I did have everything I needed to fix its companion: a 6 Meter VHF Amplifier! I started researching both pieces of equipment to see what I would need, or should know before deciding to fix it up. It appeared that the Gooney Box was intact, except for a power adapter. I decided to see if I could order the 12-pin female Cinch Jones Plug. It was hard to find, but I managed to get a hold of one from in Georgia. (I had a very nice conversation with Ed, by the way, who is familiar with the Northeast US).
I still don’t have it yet, but it should arrive sometime this week. The other thing I’m lacking for the Gooney Box is a carbon microphone. I went to eBay, and was able to get a new old stock microphone for under $20, including shipping. I’m also looking for an 8400 kc crystal, so that I can operate the box on 50. Amazon S3 File Upload Api Call. 4 Mc, which is the 6 meter AM calling frequency. Oh, and I can’t forget the antenna!
I’ll need to order that, too! I’ll do that once I know I can get the box to power up!
Jabardasth Comedy Show Free Download October here. I decided to start working on the linear amplifier first. It looks relatively simple, but the first thing I noticed was that it was missing a rectifier tube. It was hard to read the number of the companion tube in the neighboring socket.
I decided to search the Internet for the schematics. (I also found the manual for the Gooney Box).
I looked at the rectifier tube numbers, and did a search on eBay. A set of rectifier tubes were up for auction! I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t need two, but for a starting bid of 99 cents, and with only a day left, I figured it was worth a shot. I ended up winning the auction, and had two rectifier tubes for around $7.50, which includes shipping.
They arrived in the mail on Friday. I thought to myself.
I have a weekend project! It’s not that I don’t have a lot of projects to do as it is, because I do. This one just seemed to be more fun! Friday night after dinner, I decided to start taking the amp apart. It was much easier than expected.
I knew that I had to replace one jack in the back that connects the amplifier to the VFO jack on the back of the Gooney Box. After flipping the amplifier over, I was in for a pleasant surprise! This was going to be quite an easy to fix!
I didn’t want to do anything major that night, so I decided to take the two 826 tubes out (yes, they’re the largest ones in the front), and dust them off. Since I won the two rectifier tubes, I decided that it might not be a bad idea to just use them, and keep the other tube as a spare. I also decided to polish up the chassis a bit. It didn’t need to look perfect, but I did want it to look nice. I also started giving the cabinet a good cleaning as well.
I also checked the fuses (my favorite thing) in the AC plug to make sure they were okay. I wanted to make sure I had a complete list of items I needed when I went to the hardware store the next day!
Saturday morning came, and after going to the hardware store, I rushed home to start on my project. I replaced the jack in the back, which took a total of 15 minutes, vacuumed out the remaining dust, cleaned the inside of the cabinet, cleaned up the control knobs, lubricated the variable capacitors and blower, and also sprayed some contact cleaner in the tube sockets.
I inserted all of the tubes, and slid the chassis back into the cabinet. After replacing the knobs, I decided to plug the VHF amplifier in to see if it would work. With my thumb and index finger on the power knob, I had my eyes glued to the amplifier as I twisted the knob clockwise. The tubes lit up, the amp’s power supply hummed and the blower was whirring away! I left the amplifier on for awhile to make sure that all would be okay. To be honest with you, it was kind of hard to take my eyes off of the glowing box!
All seemed to be okay. After running it for an hour, I decided to power it down. Later that evening, I powered the amp up again, ran it for an hour, turned it off, and followed the same procedure one more time.
All seems to be good. The only thing I haven’t been able to do yet is test how well it relays or amplifies a 6 meter signal. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do that next weekend! With all the research and repairs, I figure the amp took me about 25 hours to fix. That’s not bad.
I owe a lot to the members of the as well. They’ve been a tremendous help in guiding me as to what I should do, not do, what to look for and what not to look for. Thanks, guys! One of the members on the referred to the amp as an “Easy Bake Oven.” After powering it up and letting it sit for a bit, I can see why! The amp does get quite warm, and that’s only in the standby, or receive mode!
I’m not really sure how hot it would get while transmitting! The back cover of the amp is missing. I’ll probably make a homemade covering, probably out of pet screen, just to keep curious fingers out of the case while the amp is powered up! Nobody wants several hundred of volts coarsing through their veins! So, step one of my project is done. I did start cleaning up the Gooney Box today, too. Like I said: I haven’t been able to power it up yet as I’m still waiting for the power adapter.
Now, my only quandary is: do I want to run the box on AC, or DC power? Enjoy the pictures, and I’ll keep you posted! Posted in,,, .
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