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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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21st Aug 2007, 1:00 am | #1 |
Retired Dormant Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sammamish, WA, USA
Posts: 2
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RA-17 Restoration Specialist?
Hello all:
I am trying to find out if anyone in the UK has taken the place of Rob Filby with respect to repairing and restoring Racal RA-17/RA-117 radios? Is it time to give up on these machines? Best regards, -- Larry Gadallah VE6VQ/W7 Sammamish, WA, USA |
21st Aug 2007, 12:26 pm | #2 |
Retired Dormant Member
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Bristol, UK.
Posts: 837
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Re: RA-17 Restoration Specialist?
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26th Aug 2007, 5:47 pm | #3 |
Rest in Peace
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Chard, South Somerset, UK.
Posts: 7,457
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Re: RA-17 Restoration Specialist?
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28th Aug 2007, 7:53 am | #4 | |
Retired Dormant Member
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Sammamish, WA, USA
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Re: RA-17 Restoration Specialist?
Quote:
It is my understanding from some comments I've read on the Premium-RX list that Rob Filby is no longer accepting work on RA-17s. If this is wrong, I'd love to find out, along with a way to contact him . My remarks about "giving up" were not intended to be provocative, as I know that servicing the RA-17 properly requires some rather esoteric test equipment (and knowledge, I'm sure) that is not readily available. I have no idea of what the situation is with respect to spare parts, particularly mechanical ones, but I'm sure what sources there are are gradually drying up. Of course, the whole theme of the original question refers to the supply of people who are knowledgeable in the repair and restoration of these receivers. Cheers, |
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28th Aug 2007, 4:59 pm | #5 |
Rest in Peace
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Chard, South Somerset, UK.
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Re: RA-17 Restoration Specialist?
Ok Gadallah - thanks for the reply.
If I come upon any relevant updates to this - I'll report here. The "Premium-RX" reference: is this a Web Site - or something? I've never come across that reference before. Spare parts and know-how: I have no way of proving this, but there must be a lot of RA-17s (& thier ilk) out there, since they were supplied in huge quantities to UK Government Agencies (sshh - "you-know-who" ). By now, I would have expected most of these - if not all - have been released to the "public at large". Therefore, not only is there probably a substantial pool of technical knowledge out there, but similarly quite a few spare bits 'n' pieces. You occaisionally see complete receivers - and parts - on E-Bay. Routine servicing: For myself, yes, I own a RA-17, and have done various servicing jobs on it. And yes, you do really need fairly decent test kit to do the job properly (apart from routine replacement of Rs and Cs). The main headache in this direction is the accurate alignment of the 40 MHz (+/- 650KHz) band-pass filter. It's not everyone who has a Polyskop or a spectrum analyser! Cheers. Al / Skywave. |
28th Aug 2007, 6:51 pm | #6 | |
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Oxford, UK.
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Re: RA-17 Restoration Specialist?
Quote:
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29th Aug 2007, 6:08 pm | #7 |
Rest in Peace
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Chard, South Somerset, UK.
Posts: 7,457
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Re: RA-17 Restoration Specialist?
Thanks Nick - looks interesting - I shall study it in depth later on.
Al / Skywave. |