Early 1970's Radar Range

Feb 09, 2007 25 Replies

I just threw out a 1977 Magic Chef with a huge interior and electronic controls that worked wonderfully until I heated some hamburgers I didn't realize were wrapped in foil. The small fire melted the inner ceiling piece and the shaft for the stirrer, and I tried for a few years to find parts to at least fix the stirrer (the inner ceiling piece was ugly but usable). Failing that, I finally gave up and made the wife happy.

It was MUCH better than any of the other microwave ovens we've had since, in that it did fractional heating (10-90%) by turning the magnetron in tenths of a second, i.e. 40% heat was on 0.4 seconds, off 0.6 seconds. This tended to heat things MUCH more nicely. The ones we've had since tend to do garbage stuff, e.g. 40 seconds at 50% heat means it heats for 20 seconds and runs the timer with heat off for 20 seconds. If I wanted to heat stuff that way I could do that myself with a bang-bang on-off controller and my kitchen clock.

"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine." -- Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek's Steven Levy

The Panasonic Genius models have an SMPS that can vary the true power down to 10%.

Thanks! I'll look at one when the discretionary budget comes back up a bit.

"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine." -- Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek's Steven Levy

UPDATE ON MY OLD RADARANGE:

I managed to get the old screws out and have installed the new rubber seal along with the clean mica-glass and everything else to ensure a nice clean and snug fit. After reassembling the door and turning on the Radarange, I used an Amprobe "microwave leakage detector" borrowed from a friend. I honestly expected to find a small leak (at the very least). But there were none! I guess the only thing left to do now is to make myself a bag of popcorn. Maybe after I shine all the chrome on this baby! Bryan

why do almost none of the modern electronic controllers do it like that? Bang bang control is no good for eclairs or souffles.

NT

There are a lot of useless microwave leakage detectors on the market over here, simply because theres no need for them to work. Your old rubber sealed machine is an unusual exception to that.

NT

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