Radio alignment tools

Regardless, in most newer TV's, AM and FM radios, you'll find no place to use any of those tools. Those old coil days are gone forever!

Not in transmitters and commercial radios.

True, however, if one compares an old Collins auto-mechanical transmitter / receiver (the one with brass gears) from end WWII era, with the latest designs than you have to admit that alignment / tuning has also changed dramatically. Now with all crystal controlled PLL frequency synthesizes, pre-tuned ceramic/crystal devices and cavity resonators, the need for realignment / tuning has really been minimized, specially in the IF sections.

A lot of old equipment is still in daily use, in some fields. I have worked on transmitters up to 130 KW Visual and 65 KW aural. You don't replace these every year or two.

I worked on the production line for an $80,000 (US) telemetry receiver (RCB2000)and there were still a lot of adjustments to be made even though it had a dual DSP front end, massive FIR filtering, digital signal combining and 12 microprocessors. I had a set of ceramic alignment tools that cost a couple hundred dollars issued by the test department. The replacement tips were around $45 and would shatter if dropped to the floor the wrong way.

Classic government contracting stuff, eh?

Is Microdyne still around?

made

NASA sites still use some Microdyne receivers and a lot of Harris Multifunction receivers (MFR) for telemetry.

Thanks for all the responses!

I ended up ordering some tools from Digi-Key, as I was ordering some other parts from them as well. I got their 25-piece set from Aven Tools (243-1017, Aven 13.500) and also the four-blade ceramic adjuster from Aven (243-1014, Aven 13.230). Both items were made in Taiwan. The

To answer some other points that were raised, my metal screwdriver was not a very good fit in the coil slug. It tended to contact just the sides of the slug's rectangular recess; / is the blade: ___ | | | /| | / | |/ | |___|

The crack started at one of the corners of the recess. The new 25-piece set has enough different variations on a flat-bladed screwdriver tip that I think I'll be able to find one that fits the recess nicely.

These coils were brand new and had no Glyptal or other sealer on them, but I have seen such sealers used on coils, pots, and screws on factory- built gear. Before I soldered the coils onto the board, I ran the cores all the way up and down to make sure they would turn easily; the manufacturer's instructions mentioned that they might be stiff. One of them was a little stiffer than the others, but not markedly so. Still, one of them got very stiff after I soldered it to the board.

Thanks again!

Matt Roberds

The prices are high because the production numbers are low. On the other hand, some of the telemetry receivers at NASA had been in service for 30 years without requiring any service. Over the product life, it is very a reasonable cost for engineered to order electronics. A telemetry system is tailored to the application. We built base chassis with the common parts and added a set of boards built to meet the customers needs.

L3-Com bought them about five years ago, then shut the Ocala plant down about three years ago. They laid off 200 people and moved a dozen people to a new building near Philadelphia. They dropped all the mature Microdyne product lines and only kept the newest product along with a few people involved with the design. They bought Microdyne after spending a fortune for an in house digital telemetry design that didn't work at all. They contracted with Microdyne to test the performance of their prototype. It was built by a former Microdyne engineer who they got rid of years before so he claimed we were lying. All I can say is the test unit performed about as well as the mockup that went to a trade show, with 50 ohm 2 watt carbon resistors across all the BNC connectors. A laptop was inside, along with a 250 roll of ribbon cable to make it weigh what it was supposed to. The display on the mockup simulated a real radio, and so did the prototype.

The L3-Com prototype was so poorly designed we kept the mockup on display in the Manufacturing Engineering office for everyone to see how not to do things. It was flimsy, poorly laid out and would have been a nightmare on the production floor.

Don't you have that backwards? The government was buying Microdyne equipment to replace aging Harris systems. We built a turnkey system for NOAA at Wallops Island to replace a Harris system they couldn't keep up and running. We were allowed two weeks after delivery to get it to meet specs. The engineers arrived a day early, uncrated the racks that night and wired them together. The next morning the facility's manager took one look and told our team they could go home, it was perfect.

We also built a turnkey system for the Italian space program, including a portable system in a large trailer that was to be towed behind a two ton truck, followed bu a diesel generator. We also built a one of a kind modified 700 series KU band receiver for the International Space Station. I was involved in all three projects, as well as preparing the RCB-2000 for the production floor.

Most Microdyne products were built with the tech in mind because we had to do so much custom work on every unit. There were pages of options, and we were always adding new items that customers requested.

A lot of the software out there is not designed any better. I worked for three years on very large database systems. Occasionally, for amusement, I would tell my co-workers that as I walked in the door on my first day I was concerned that I would be unable to measure up to the knowledge and skill of the other people there. Inevitably they would break out in hysterical laughter, tears streaming down their faces.

"To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.". Otto von Bismarck

My first day on the job I was assigned a "Trainer" to bring me up to speed and warned that I only had six weeks to get up to at least 70% of the work produced by the existing techs. By the end of the first day I was repairing modules the trainer thought were scrap. The start of the next week I got my test stamp five weeks early, and the following Monday a "Committee" of angry techs arrived at my bench and threatened me. They ordered me to reduce my output, because I was making everyone else look bad. I smiled and gave them three options. They could work harder, they could work faster, or they could get out of my face because I wasn't working up to my ability yet and they weren't going to stop me. I made some enemies, and a lot of friends. I offered to teach them better techniques and logical troubleshooting. Some took the offer and got better, while others just grumbled and insisted they were the best techs because they had been there for 15 years or more.

What is it the Marines say? "Lead or follow but get out of my way"? I once got a new job and was sent to head office for a week's training as a HVAC estimator. On Wednesday they told me I could leave now, since in two days I'd learned everything I could be taught and I hadn't been too subtle about it.

I wrote software to calculate the cost of retrofitting older homes with better insulation and storm windows in 1986. It also created a B.O.M. and a sheet of calculations on how long it would take to pay back the cost to upgrade.

There was already one commercial product on the market. It took two or three hours to enter all the data into the forms, and reloading three different paper forms into the printer. It leased for $1,000 a month. I did it on a Commodore 128 with three printers, and you could enter the data and do the calculations in under 15 minutes. Total cost was a couple hundred dollars. It was fun to see people jump when three different dot matrix printers started spitting out paper on the shelves behind them.

And because there is a tremendous amount of overhead in the bidding and contract management process. And then you have the 'added value' from DCAA, DCAS, DCMA, DCMC, and of course the ACO. Thank you, taxpayers.

We were so niche that we usually got the frantic phone call asking, "Is there any way you can make model # XX do this?" Some systems took a lot of time to bid, but they were usually sure they would get it before spending much time preparing a bid.

I remember a few times where a contract went to a lower bidder, and then later the contracting agency would come back to us with their hat in their hands and ask if we'd be interested in submitting a new bid for a slightly modified system. That was a clear sign that the low bidder couldn't deliver, and you can be sure the folks involved in the rebid knew that there wasn't going to be any competition..