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Vintage Amateur and Military Radio Amateur/military receivers and transmitters, morse, and any other related vintage comms equipment. |
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30th Apr 2017, 7:34 pm | #61 |
Rest in Peace
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Chard, South Somerset, UK.
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Re: Racal RA17C tips
Several RA-17s have passed through my hands in which I replaced the BFO assembly with a product detector. The improvement was worth the effort.
Al. |
30th Apr 2017, 7:40 pm | #62 |
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Join Date: Mar 2016
Location: Champaign, Illinois, USA.
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Re: Racal RA17C tips
Exactly what was the improvement? I've tried a product detector on
a couple of receivers and noticed no significant improvement. These all had, however, plenty of BFO injection, and I never ever tried them with really high S/N ratio SSB signals, best S/N was probably 30 dB at best. |
2nd May 2017, 4:00 pm | #63 |
Heptode
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Location: Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, UK.
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Re: Racal RA17C tips
I regularly use an RA17C-12 and find it's SSB performance to be perfectly adequate without any modification.
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Keith Yates - G3XGW VMARS & BVWS member http://www.tibblestone.com/oldradios/Old_Radios.htm |
3rd May 2017, 12:14 am | #64 | |
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Re: Racal RA17C tips
Quote:
Al. |
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3rd May 2017, 6:17 am | #65 |
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Re: Racal RA17C tips
The RA117 may be worth looking at. It has as standard an S meter reading the AGC line which manages to work normally on CW and SSB, so the AGC is definitely active. The 3-way knob switch for the meter is the obvious difference on the front panel in place of the RA17's toggle switch. You also get a full Watt of audio.
In the early 1980s I bought an RA117 from John's Radio in Birkenshaw (Nr Bradford) The receiver was NOS, taken right out of long-term packaging and put into a slim metal cabinet from a batch which John had had made locally. Inside, the castings gleamed! I used it on aM CW and SSB without an SSB adaptor. I wondered about one, but never happened to find one. David
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3rd May 2017, 9:43 am | #66 |
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Re: Racal RA17C tips
The RA17C-12 seems to many many similarities with the RA117 - it too has the 3 position meter switch which includes an S-meter position. Possibly it has the same AGC arrangements. I've certainly never had to reduce the RF gain to resolve SSB signals.
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Keith Yates - G3XGW VMARS & BVWS member http://www.tibblestone.com/oldradios/Old_Radios.htm Last edited by Keith; 3rd May 2017 at 9:43 am. Reason: Typo |
3rd May 2017, 11:36 am | #67 |
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Re: Racal RA17C tips
Ah, that may explain things. Thanks, Keith
David
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