R-390A Blue Stripers

(Don't miss the "nice" pictures at the bottom of the page)

These two came from Fair Radio in early November, 2000.

They're pretty ugly right out of the box, but should improve significantly over the next several months.

These are believed to have come from the St. Julien's Creek Massacre.  Either blue or yellow stripes were painted down the face of these receivers during their "de-commissioning" (a rather kind description of what other's have called radio rape).

Blue Striper #1

Final results and performance are shown here.

It had two rivets along the bottom, and was really rough on the right edge.

Here is the front panel after fixing some of the scraped metal and filling rivet holes and repainting.

And here's a close-up of the same bad corner on the lower right after repair.

Here are some pictures of the RF deck before I started cleaning.

I took the RF deck apart, separating the gears from the RF deck and 2nd Xtal Oscillator deck.

I completely disassembled the gear train.  I took apart each split gear, the 10 turn stops, the antenna trim shaft and insulators, and polished all the metal surfaces.  The slug racks now move just fine, even without their springs installed!  Several of the slugs were frozen in their slug guide before starting.  Of course all pins and sockets were given a gentle cleansing with DeOxit, as some pins had a white deposit of some sort (especially the crystals in the 2nd crystal oscillator deck).

Here are the results:

Blue Striper #2

Checkout The Quest Online to see where I now spend much of my time.  God Bless!

© 2005 by Walter Wilson, KK4DF.  All information is offered for non-commercial use without warranty, expressed or implied.