I went to the Findlay hamfest this past weekend instead of the Clearfield hamfest - I wanted to go to the latter, but something got in the way and I went local instead.
Unfortunately, Findlay has shrank substantially over the years. Last year was probably 1/3 of the year before, and this year maybe 1/2 of last year. I’m sad to see that happen, and it makes me wonder if it’s because the club is aging out, because there are more shows, or simply the changing fortunes of time. Probably a some of each, but it was quite small this year with a lot of open space. We used to shut the show down at 1PM, but headed out at about 9:30 for this one.
There was a bit to look at, but I had to struggle to find interesting things to photograph. Here’s a few things for you, some of these I know have showed up in the past.
Keeping the ground from blowing away.
A nice old Schauer battery charger.
These are getting rarer
An interesting VTVM.
Meters. All kinds.
Piles of junk. Hamfest gold.
I see these here quite often.
All the bearcats you need.
Next show is Cleveland, which has been pretty good so far, after that the Early Television Museum’s swap meet and I’ll probably close the year out with MARC @ MAPS and the antique show at the fairgrounds. Stay tuned!
I picked this guy up from an online sales site for next to nothing - I assume because it’s not a desirable Heathkit unit and people don’t seem to care much for these late-model EICO devices. Everyone wants the stuff with eye tubes…but I was just looking at another siggen because you can’t ever have enough of those.
This guy was probably made in 1968, because of the late ‘67 date on the meter.
The underside is decently laid out, but there’s some chaos here.
Of note is the mix of old and new carbon resistors, and the old and new style electrolytics. Those old brown carbons probably need to go, but we’ll check them in a later post.
Here’s the money shot:
I don’t necessarily like lamp being lit like that…but it’s not flickering. Usually when these go bad, you’ll get that circuit trying to balance itself and it will go up and down as the lamp gains resistance from heating up and then falls back when the resistance gets too high. However, the output is rock solid…so maybe this one is supposed to operate like this? Others of this type I have do not do this. It could be a symptom of wildly out of tolerance resistors, so…back to checking those in a later post!
And finally, here is the output. Nice clean signal.
It looks like this won’t need a whole lot, other than some of the potential failures being replaced before they fail. Being 60 instead of 80 years old probably helps there.
Stay tuned for the next part of this series. We’ll dig into the components and see what’s what!
I’m starting to think the only thing this device needs is a good cleaning and calibration. However, there are some electrolytics in this device, as well as one of those 1600VDC blocking capacitors. While those don’t appear to be bad, I’m going to replace them regardless just so this thing is ready for the ages.
As I don’t have a whole lot of low-voltage equipment, I had to order some of the larger part. I also had to order some of the 1600VDC part, since I only buy those as needed. Those are on the way, and we’ll get to those later.
The first part we’re going to replace is the little 10μF 16VDC part that’s in the zero circuit. Surprisingly, it’s not actually bad - it’s just way off of course, like all old electrolytics are. >20μF at about 11Ω - that’s about normal for this small of a part.
But here’s the new one anyway:
I did a bit of tweaking on the calibration adjustments, and I can say I was pleased by what I saw. I believe that was more the cleaning than the capacitor.
As soon as I get the other parts, Ill replace those as well. Stay tuned!
Some time ago, an EICO 242 VTOM came across the bench. While I wasn’t going to do anything with it, I decided to see if I could bring it back to life.
Here’s the issue:
The DVM is measuring 20VDC, the EICO 242 is measuring the same voltage, but reporting only ~17VDC. Something is wrong here.
It’s probably one or more of the following:
Out of calibration
Resistors out of tolerance
Switches are very dirty
Some unseen damage
There’s not a whole lot in this device. Let’s check a few resistors:
The first one is supposed to be 90Ω, the second 1.227MΩ. They’re actually pretty good.
I did about half a dozen, and all were like this - quite well in tolerance. Hmm…
The switches are really blackened from age, so I’m going to give them a cleaning and then do a calibration. We’ll see what that does for us. If it gets the meter “good enough!” I may leave it at that…but I’d still like to go through the resistors just to see what’s what, and there are a few small electrolytics in there that certainly need replaced. Stay tuned!
