As they say, the stupid shall be punished! Operating portable with my trusty
old Triton I during Field Day, I lost almost all receive signal and ended up
aborting the operation. When I got home I had a suggestion to check the reed
relays and was examining K1 on the SWR board which is supposed to short out
the receiver on transmit. I was checking to see if that was affecting
transmit output as well, and grabbed a jumper to my antenna tuner so I could
transmit and check power output on my external meter. I saw nothing, even
though the Triton forward power seemed to be deflecting normally. Alas, I
then discovered that I was not transmitting through the tuner, but directly
into my 585 Paragon. I quickly corrected the cabling and now find the Triton
is operating normally with full output and good receive operation, so it may
have been a hung relay. But...my Paragon is severelty crippled, and while I
am still receiving, the S-meter barely deflects and it acts like I have an
attenuator on the input.
I lifted the component (EMI protection diode?) that jumpers the coax
connector on the back of the Paragon, but it made no difference. All bands
are seem to be, perhaps worse on the higher frequency bands (I was receiving
on 20m on the Paragon and transmitting there as well with the Triton) and
down at least 2-3 S-units if not more, but otherwise seem normal when I can
hear anything. Where I normally have a S3 atmospheric noise level in my
rural location, the S-meter now sits on the bottom of the scale, but signals
do cause it to deflect up, just not nearly as far as before. RF Gain is at
max and operates as expected, and the attenuator is off, but further lowers
signal when on by about 20dB when listening to WWV. On the BC band the
attenuation is only about 6dB, but I recall the RF amp is not in that
circuit, but this suggests the RF amp is OK. NB is off, and no difference
when on. AGC is on, and audio jumps up when off (and S-meter quits working)
when off as expected. Transmit seems normal and results in full power out. I
just have a very weak receiver now. Any suggestions on what could have been
fried?
=Vic=
WA45THR
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