Russian Vega VEF-206 repair

Radio working perfectly again

  

I have a Russian Vega VEF-206, bought a few years online for the nostalgia of once again owning the first shortwave set I ever bought as a boy in 1983/4 from a local electronics shop in my hometown of Callington. Reception and audio quality is superb. And so when it recently developed intermittent very low audio and signal levels which could be remedied by a gentle slap on her head (!)  I eventually discovered this solder joint that had come away from the PCB. I have just resoldered it and she is working as good as new again. 

I thought at first it was a component failure, but after posting a question on the UK Vintage Radio Repair forum and needing to more carefully clarify the symptoms, I discovered the intermittent nature of the fault. So as well as a small degree of technical skill and patience which I learnt in abundance over the few years it took me to eventually get my vintage Swinburne CR600 airband scanner working, this weekend I have also discovered that carefully clarifying the symptoms is also key. 

But more than any of these things, I have learnt that without the help and kindness of other people us beginner repairers would be lost. Not sure it would have been possible in the pre-internet days to ask for and receive help and guidance from technical experts and other hobbyists and enthusiasts from around the world. So if I'm ever tempted to think ill of the internet and complain about the time it wastes and how we'd be happier without it, I shall remember this!

I actually sent my airband scanner from Swinburne Electronics, a 6-channel, crystal-controlled scanner from the 1980s, off to several "professional" repairers advertising their services online. At huge expense. One even charged me £50 just to tell me it was completely broken and no longer repairable due to the age of parts! Can you believe it. You pay to send it off, you pay to have them look at it, you pay to have the *hopeless radio" returned. And then....... with the kindness and patience of other people who offer their services for nothing, you work on it together over the months until it is fixed and working just as it did when your parents first bought it for you, some 40 years previously. Some of these "repair" people ought to be ashamed of themselves. But of course, none of it is regulated. 

No wonder so many of our belongings end up in landfill and few people get anything repaired.

I'll post a video of my own VEF-206 radio receiving a shortwave station in the next few days.

 

Russian Navy Tactical Callsign 2 Logs

 

14552.0 : RUNY CW XXX XXX DU78 DU78 85509 KRUGLÄ K 331 331 UPSOPSIH ... 77K (23AUG23 1010) (AJT)

12461.0 : RUNY CW FBMC FBMC DE Y87S Y87S (28AUG23 0600) (AJT)

Using Tecsun PL660 and Telescopic whip 

50.5823° N, 3.4644° W

More Russian Navy CW Monitoring with decode of SYNOP message

 As you may know I have been listening to the Russian Navy morse code messages on HF in my latest shortwave adventures. Last night I received a message from Yakov Grebelsky UCBC5 which was something like this:

UCBC5 .......SML FOR RCD88 RMB97.....17181 99568 10118 41598 71304 10170 40240 54000......

This is a routine weather observation which can be decoded by hand (eg 99568 means latitude 56.8 degrees north etc). In fact even just those two first sets will give you its lat 56.8N and long 11.8E in Kattegat.

But inputting these codes into metaf2xml will give you all the data including temperature, wind direction, pressure etc in a visually appealing and easily understood format.

This is quite an intricate area of shortwave that many may be unfamiliar with but keen to have a bash at, so hope this gives you inspiration! It's great fun. And CW, unlike SSB, propagates much better.

GL 73 Adam

Russian Navy Morse Code Monitoring on HF

 

Russian Navy Replenishment Ship "ELJNIA"

08784.0 : RUNY CW RCLH RPT (06AUG23 1815) (AJT)

08784.0 : RUNY CW RMP DE RBDF QSA? QTC K (07AUG23 1606) (AJT)

08784.0 : RUNY CW RBDF OK QR SK (07AUG23 1810) (AJT)

12464.0 : RUNY CW RBCS OK QYT4 QCMK (08AUG23 1448) (AJT)

08784.0 : RUNY CW RMP DE RBDF QSA? QTC K B48 J4 8 1800 SML (08AUG23 1608) (AJT)

08784.0 : RUNY CW RMP DE RCLH QSA? QTC K (08AUG23 1815) (AJT)

12464.0 : RUNY CW QYT4 QSX678 QWH1237 ..... (09AUG23 0954) (AJT)

14555.0 : RUNY CW UCTA5 DE RIW Moscow clg Ru Navy Replenishment Tnkr Eljnia (10AUG23 0845)

11000.0 : RUNY CW UCTA5 DE RIW QSL 592 K (10AUG23 1525) (AJT)

08821.0 : RUNY CW Naval Air Ground Station “S” Mkr (10AUG23 1730) (AJT)  

These are some of my recent logs from listening to shortwave stations for Russian Navy activity in morse code. I record the transmissions on a digital voice recorder and playback slowly. If I still can't get the code, I record that into my phone, and run it through an MP3 speed reducer app. It's easy then!

RMP is Kaliningrad and RIW Moscow. 

Lots of information can be found here at UDXF Utility Files Info

All this on just my Tecsun PL660 and it's own built-in whip

Washing Up Bowl Micro Pond Oxygenating Plant - Watercress

 

The above are two photographs of my washing up bowl pond! It has been an enjoyable project and makes a nice feature in the garden. For year one I bought some Starwort online, and it did a super job of keeping the water clear and fresh. But by year 2 it was looking a bit sorry for itself. After reading you could use watercress from the supermarket, and as it was under £2, I decided to give it a try. You just buy the bag of salad watercress (the big-leaved stuff and not the "mustard & cress tiny stuff) and put it in the water, floating freely. There is no soil in my pond, but some pebbles, and I hinestly didn't think it would work. But it did, and it does, and within a few days the cress was forming healthy-looking roots and settling in nicely. Within weeks it was huge! And soon tall white flowers were towering over the frogs and pixies! I thinned it out to enable me to see the water. And now, 9 months later and the following January, it is still alive and the water crystal clear, despite one or two nights where the pond froze completely. I am confident, as the temperatures rise again in spring, that the cress will grow nicely again, but if it doesn't, a quick trip to Sainsbury's and I can get some more.

Roberts R862 Short Demonstration

 

Crystal Scanner Oscillation Fault

This is a short video demonstrating the fault I have with my Swinburne Electronics CR600

airband receiver.

Initially it only displayed this behaviour on one or two channels and it was intermittent. But now it behaves like this permanently, which makes me think that perhaps a component in the crystal oscillator part of the circuit has failed. 

When I tune to the fundamental frequency of the crystal on a handheld scanner, there is an oscillation from both sets. But the working set continues to oscillate strongly as I move the scanner several feet or so away from the crystal circuit. The faulty radio oscillates only weakly and stops doing so only a few inches away.