[VHFcontesting] Kenwood TV-506

[Michael Sapp]

> > Has any one used one of these not on a 820 that it was made for? I 
> > picked up a nice one  (no cable) and was going to see how it worked with 
> > my K2. Any hints? Thanks Mike

Mike:  I recall W3KWH Steel City ARC had the TV-506 and TV-502 pair in the 
late 1980s.  They seemed to work reasonably well although I recall we had to 
replace the first dual-gate FET in the receive converter a few times from 
static discharge damage.

It is old enough to treat it like an AA5 radio and check all the larger 
value (.01 & up) ceramic disc bypass caps with an in-circuit ESR meter. 
(Electrolytics as well.) Some of the lower cost ESR meters will not measure 
above 100 ohms at 100kHz, (.01uf around 150 ohms @ 100kHz) but a basic DC 
test value with on ohm meter under 10M-ohm for a ceramic disc cap I would 
definitely replace....seems like .1uF and up C values tend to degrade faster 
than the smaller values. I would think a more common DC test value on a disc 
cap should be 100M-ohm to 500M-ohm or more.  Silver Mica caps seem to act 
opposite at times, small value pf values sometimes fail with their small 
surface area per volt....

Try not to jam the tuning slugs, a drop of telfon or silicone oil on the 
core perimeter would not hurt if you absolutely feel the need to tweak them.

Thanks for the flashback memory ~:)

73, Mike wa3tts