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jonboy
| | Posted on Saturday, July 05, 2003 - 5:18 pm: | 
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would like your input before i purchase one for my Brownings let me know your thaughts and why jonboy |
bruce
| | Posted on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 8:21 am: |
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Jonboy ..... WHY?
Ok why would you go get any external device for a browning? Why if you want to cover a wide range of frequencys dont you just go get a export radio?
The browning is a nice radio but its always puzzled me why when there are so many others out there all set up and ready to go why go that route? Now to answer you question Sliders ???? what ever that is .... VFO's DRIFT all my older ham rigs used them ...... Digital controlers would be the way to go. Just my thoughts...
Bruce |
Browningboy
| | Posted on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 11:18 am: |
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And why wouldn't you go that route????? All I personally have is Brownings and Trams and the guys up here talk on 28 so u see to talk to my friends I needed to either get a sillie or a glen and those just never seemed to be very stable drift,over heating problems.The digital contollers have no drift on AM or SSB and are Availible from a few places I got mine from my personal Tech Alan @ tubesplus.com who builds a nice 858 PLL controller Box from Pal VFO's let me tell you the craftsmanship and capabilities of these units are supperb you will in no means be disapointed I wasn't and for the price of 150 plus shipping it's a steal and will ellimenate all those drift problems.And apparently some of us have never seen a Browning or Tram with a vfo or slider well they where none for that as they are only 23 channles I'm an advid collector of Brownings and Trams and you will in no way hurt your rig jonboy the controller would come with it's own teflon cable ready to go all you do is take out the channle 9 crystal and plug in 1 end and the other gets grounded to the chassi and is less money and hassle of buying a new export wich i think are very over priced anyway Well that's my 2 cents for today and jonboy you can see my set up on browninglabs.com webb site the photo section #4 scroll down i'm the guy in R.I. Browning Boy and you can see I'm no smuck or just a talker but do run what a say i have cause i do BT634 browningboy in R.I. John R Brown II
PS yes I do have a Galaxy DX 2527 Base But let me tell you my Brownings and Trams Walk the Dog over that junker every day so it collects nothing but dust FOR SALE TOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! |
RCI 2990
| | Posted on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 12:28 pm: |
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Jon boy. Get the glenn digital VFO. They are on ebay from time to time.. They are the way to go if you want a slider for your browning... |
Scrapiron63
| | Posted on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 3:52 pm: |
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I've owned the Brownings since the late 1960s, and of course like most, I always wanted more channels. I've used the Pal and siltronix VFO's, and the glenn's. They all work pretty well, might drift around some, but for AM they're OK. The Glenn is better than the others because it gives the freq readout and is more stable. A controller like browning boy is talking about would be the ideal way to go. However, I have the crystal mod in the Mark III that I use. It takes a little know how to install them, but one 10 dollar crystal in the TX and RX will get 23 more channels. Thats just for AM, but most people I know don't use the Brownings for Sideband. I've got a Ranger 3500 hanging under the shelve for SB. I also like the Mark III band spread expanded so it slides about 15-20 kc, you can get all the RC skips with that, although you do need a freq counter with this much slide. Since they are tube type, you might have to tune them a little over an 80 channel spread, but with a couple little tricks in the TX, they will go 40-50 channels ok, without re-tuning. I just use a few channels anyway for AM talking. scrapiron |
Browningboy
| | Posted on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 7:08 pm: |
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Well Scrapiron how about the mod info for the RX and TX of the Browning for my webb page I've got a folder here under the mods section any help from you or anyone else will be apriciatted Bt634 |
bruce
| | Posted on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 7:30 pm: |
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Jonboy
This guy built his first station out of WW2 aircraft radios ..... ones with carbon mikes so i have RESPECT for older stuff. My self i used tube gear from 1960 to the late 70's going to a 75A2 reciver MODED for SSB and a HT-37 PHASING type ssb transmitter for my ham station ...... it replaced my ELDCO in 1980 and was used untill we moved in 2001.
The browning in its day was one of a few cb radios which was collins quailty very nice but so was my collins 75A2. It puzzles me except for its colectable and no doubt they have value why people go this far. As for 10 meters lissen on 29.0-29.15 youll hear a mix of classic sets like the collins on there on AM along with a radio shack, icom or yaseu again i been on there with both my old stations and this shack of new stuff.
In the time i had them many repairs were needed and I gladly did them but there comes a time where the new stuff is just so much better and there was not enough atraction to spend the time and money keeping 50 year old radios running so i went with newer stuff passing it along to a needy ham who sold and traded it for a fairly nice station setting him up for now.
I still have some older radios a HE-15 i had since new in 63 and a HE-20c i got a few years back which i have working but not restored yet but disposed of several large boxes of tubes in the trash along with a pile of 23 ch cb sets no need to keep them but i did keep my 1952 heathkit tube tester .... just in case!
Bruce |
2600
| | Posted on Monday, July 07, 2003 - 1:55 am: |
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Hi Jonboy,
Using a slider pretty well dictates using a frequency counter to get it on frequency, and so you'll know when it drifts enough to matter. "Touching up" the frequency every so often is pretty well a part of using one.
The "ping" is a pretty good indirect way to tell if the slider has drifted. The sound of the ping will degrade as the transmitter drifts away from where the receiver is tuned.
The Glenn displays your frequency, AND your drift. The advantage is that it displays all the time, not JUST when you key up with the mike gain down. An "inline" counter that installs in the coax will only show a steady reading on a quiet carrier. Audio modulation will disrupt the reading, making it bounce around randomly while you talk.
There is a trick to use a "bench-type" frequency counter, the kind with just one socket on the front. It involves installing a jack in the rear of the transmitter, tapped off of the driver tube and a jumper cable to the "bench" counter. This hookup will read when the 'spot' button is pushed, and will stay steady when you modulate. Tapping into the driver tube's (steady, unmodulated) carrier keeps the audio from disrupting a steady reading.
The digital controller we've been selling for $200 (plus tax/shipping) will drive the transmitter twice (or more) as hard as the commercial 'sliders' and displays the channel number (including RC's) from 1 to 92. The receiver only goes up to around channel 59 or 60. Turn the knob to the left from channel 1 and it displays a 'minus' (-) to show how many channels BELOW, up to 32 below. That's where the receiver bottoms out on lower channels. A two-digit display doesn't look quite as sexy as a 5 or 6-digit counter, but at least it eliminates the need for one. Dial up the channel you want, and that's where you are. No "swooshing" a tuning knob either side of the channel center to get it tuned in.
The one from TubesPlus is cheaper, but the fella who runs it has ignored all my e-mail, offering to buy one. Maybe you'll have better luck getting an answer from him than I did. If it's built the way I think it is, the stability should be just as good as ours, typically 100 Hz drift, tops. If he'd sell me one, I could find out just how stable it really is, so I'm just guessing. What I really want to know is how large a drive level his "controller" delivers to the radio. His price is $50 below mine, so it must be less expensive to build, maybe?
Problems with insufficient drive from a Siltronix or Glenn slider can be fixed with a "buffer" board that installs inside the Mark III SSB transmitter. E-mail me for a link to the installation instructions, if you try a slider and don't like the drop in power from what it shows on a 'crystal' channel. The "buffer" kit is still not ready for prime-time. We've been using the circuit for 20 years, but the "install-it-yourself" kit form is still being made only ten at a time.
The instruction web page for our "digital Pal" controller is not yet up. I suppose I should get on the stick with that. Should have pictures of the inside, performance specs and a schematic diagram on it when it's posted. Don't get your hopes up about copying it and building your own from the schematic alone. The selector knob, digits and the PLL are run from a small 1-chip computer inside. Unless you copy the program inside that chip, copying the circuits alone won't produce a working copy of the thing. And yeah, the chip IS copy-protected. On the other hand, not one part number is scraped from one part. No need, really. That's the other thing I wanted to find out myself about the Tubes Plus controller. How many parts still have their ID markings on them?
In the old days, the parts were the whole story. Identify them, trace down the wiring, and you could build a copy for yourself. A guy who invested a lot of work in developing that circuit wouldn't want just anybody selling copies, and competing that way. It's too much like doing your competitor's work for him... free... Look inside one of the old "Digi-Scan UFO" gadgets that attached to older 40-channel PLL radios. It has about four rows of small chips, the type numbers scraped off all of them. Makes a repair kinda tricky. The point was, after all, to make copying the design more work than it might be worth. Sure makes a simple repair not so simple. All those 14 and 16-pin chips look alike with no numbers on them. In truth, the inside of each type is very specific. The wrong chip might as well be no chip, in an old-style design like the Digi-Scan. Nowadays in more and more electronic products the real design is inside a custom-programmed computer chip of some kind. The main advantage is that it shrinks a gadget with two dozen chips down to four. I would never have tried to build anything to sell with that many parts in it. If it weren't for that computer, inside a 28-pin plastic chip, our version wouldn't exist. At all.
Like I said, if you're interested, e-mail me. I'll send back the links to some web pages. This stuff isn't 'secret', but I won't be promoting it widely until we have more stock to back up the promotion.
Oh, and if your transmitter isn't the Mark III SSB, all the above advice is kinda moot. The AM-ONLY transmitters (the skinny ones) require a "converter" gadget to accept a slider. You can't just 'wire one in' to a crystal socket on an AM-only transmitter. We have a prototype batch of the solution to THAT problem, too. Glenn made a converter to do this trick, but ours will be easier to find, if you end up needing one. The Glenn "326-1" converter board hasn't been made in over 20 years. They're kinda rare.
Enjoy your "Birds", there's nothing else like 'em.
73 |
Bigbob
| | Posted on Monday, July 07, 2003 - 6:53 am: |
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I think you'll love this.A friend of mine that goes by the handle of knight owl on channel 16 bought a browning,the seperate transmitter and reciever with a hi-z d104 beautiful sounding radio,man 4-watts would fill your entire livingroom,got it for ten bucks at a yard sale,power cord was chopped off.This thing screamed like an eagle every time he keyed,cool,he used it for 2-months.He bought a new air compressor,150psi continuous duty,noticed his "new rig" was a little dusty,pssssssst,mica everywhere,radio still recieves but 0 tx,now he has it on a shelf as a nice looking paper weight,he won't sell it for any price. |
Crafter
| | Posted on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 2:06 am: |
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Get a Glen. |
Browningboy
| | Posted on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 9:29 am: |
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No thanks on the Glen or the sillie they in our opinion are good for the looks and nastalga of them but the driver performance really stinks and those of you who know what I'm talking about know that to be true,never mind the constant drifting ,and the over heat problem of the glens unless you get the 12 volt vertion is not apealling to us,and believe you me we've had them all and have been on sence 1972 ,and I am a advid Browning & Tram collector for my station we will use the controller.But that's just me I'm a tube man Love Em Gotta Have Em and that's why those of you who have seen my recent shack photo know what I'm talking about my bedroom shack!!!!!!!!!A Browning Tram Club Member Bt634 John in R.I. BrowningBoy Channles 3/ 14/ 15/ and I'm out 10/10 10/8 on the side ,atop my hill with my screaming eagle birds and i'm back out.
P.S. For those cotton pickin mudd duckss out there and you know who you are qwack qwack and don't ya come back as we say out there in mud duck land R.I. well at least that's how it feels with all this rain John
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Browningboy
| | Posted on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 12:39 pm: |
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Again scorpion I'm very interested in your mods for the rx 7 tx of the mark III also interested in the band width mod thanks again you can send them to my email or add the info to my folder section under mods BT634 John in R.I. |
2600
| | Posted on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 11:48 am: |
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Short update to the "Digital Slider".
I have the preliminary web page with operating instructions, specs and some pictures of the inside (finally) put up on my ISP web space. Shoot me an e-mail and I'll return a link to the page. It's not ready for prime-time, so I won't post it here, just yet. The page isn't finished, still needs to have the schematic diagrams added, and instructions to properly install the slider cable.
73 |
2600
| | Posted on Friday, July 11, 2003 - 11:41 pm: |
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Shorter update.
Got the schematic diagram for the thing added to the page.
73 |
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