Homebrew link coupled antenna tuner without the link.

This is my home brew “link coupled tuner without the the link”. I copied the version that I saw at Larry NE1S’s QTH. The chassis was some sort of counter top material that came from KB1IAW along with the air variable capacitor. I wound the inductor on a piece of PCV pipe and used a piece of plexi-glass as a coil form. The vacuum variable was a hamfest find that was obtained for a dollar in a junk box. The gray tuning knob was made by my friend Jay on his 3D printer. I tried my best to build this on the cheap and be able to handle “power”. It is very easy to tune up and I use my nano VNA to tune up off air. It is fed into my homebrew open-wire line 260 ft dipole which I will document later.

R-390 restoration

This is my R-390 that I purchased from a non ham out west. I bought the unit in unknown working condition. The first thing I did when I got it was do a visual inspection. The first thing I noticed was there ws a wire harnesss that was completely chewed thru. I did a “quick and dirty” repair and then carefully powered up the receiver to verify its status. I was pleasantly surprised to see that reciver was not a total basketcase.

The next step was to completely tear it down, do a fully inspection of each module. I found a broken BNC connector in the IF deck. I also replaced the caps and resistors in the audio deck. I solidstated the audio deck power supply. I did a full cleaning each module and lubriated the RF deck using synthectic lube. The last and final step was to soda blast the front panel and repaint. Unfortunatly I did not document this project to well with pictures.