More R1000 work

Looking at the blown S meter bulb in my R1000 I suddenly remembered that I had an old Scrap CB transceiver which I had bought for parts. That had a brightly lit s-meter. A few minutes later I had extracted the bulb, it looked almost identical to the R1000 bulb.

So this morning I removed the power board from the receiver and pulled out the old bulb. The wires are so thin it was difficult to solder the "new" bulb in but I managed it eventually. Here it is on the flying lead that connects to the power board.

And the proof that it works!- here is the R1000 with the meter illuminated

Of course the replacement bulb is I guess almost 30 years old. It will be interesting to see how it lasts. But for now at least my R1000 is back in full operation.

R1000 repair

I finally got around to repairing my Trio  R1000 receiver which was intermittently locking up with a frequency reading of 39Mhz. Sometimes a good tap to the side of the receiver cured this but the fault always reappeared. Research on the internet showed this was a common problem, normally caused by dry joints on the power board.
I removed the power board and remade some of the joints below the multi way connector on the board. This did not do the trick unfortunately. I then turned my attention to the two transisistors you can see on the heatsink in the picture. Re flowing the solder on the underside of the board here has cured the fault, for now at least and the R1000 is sounding good again. Now I notice that the S meter bulb has blown so I either need to find another bulb or maybe try an LED as a replacement.

Intermittent

My Trio R1000 receiver is working again! I didn't even take off the covers either. It seems the action of removing it from the shack desk has cured it for now, obviously a dry joint or loose connection then but I will have to wait for the fault to re-occur before I can Investigate.

My laptop is running Winrad nicely now with the loaned Elektor SDR receiver attached. I now have three receivers connected to the Wellbrook loop and it is interesting to compare them.
Findings so far are that the Kenwood R5000 is the best receiver, the R1000 a close second and the Elektor a good way behind these two. Weak signals that are audible on the two old receivers are not present on the SDR. It does however sound very lively on Medium Wave so I will give it a try on that band tonight.

This weekend there are many "Special Event" stations on the Air. I believe it is international lighthouse weekend and many lighthouses around Europe have been activated on the bands. I have worked a few, mainly on 80 and 40 metres but band conditions are not too good. A pity as the weather here is so bad its an ideal day to spend in the shack!

Reaching Higher

The photo above shows my old Trio (Kenwood) R1000 receiver. You will see the frequency readout shows 39.545 Mhz.
Now this is not a good thing, the R1000 is only supposed to cover up to 30Mhz. Mine is now locked, it cannot be tuned, the bandswitch has no effect and there is no sound- it has tin fact died.
An internet search reveals this is a common problem with the R1000 as they get older- this one must be close to 30 years old, and it is normally caused by dry joints in various places. I have a few pointers to look for when I get the time, I want to try and get the Elektor SDR running first. Until then my trusty R1000 is out of service.

Kenwood R1000

The R1000 is a great receiver. I have had mine for years, its easy to use, stable and produces nice audio. It does have one drawback however- it is totally deaf on Medium Wave. Actually when I say Medium Wave I mean anything below 2 Mhz which of course includes tpband, Medium Wave, Longwave and the Navagational beacons. I did find a mod for this problem. It basically involves re-routing the feed from the MW antenna terminal on the receiver so that it bypasses the attenuation that normally switches in below 2mhz. Today I opened up the R1000 and had a try at the mod. It works! My R1000 is now far better below 2mhz, more sensitive than My R5000 which also has a deliberately deaf Medium wave stage!

Pictured is My R1000 with the top cover off. You can also see at the back the little board which provides a 12Khz output for DRM decoding.