"What a tangled web we weave"
After blasting the hell out of my rotator cable and control box and
rotator mounted indicator pot with much 160M energy over the last few
months, and after having wrapped the 10, 15, 20 and 40 M coax around the
mast during the last few hours of ARRL CW (notice only 43 hours
operation), I decided to pull the unit out of the tower and give it a
quick servicing.
I was able to change the pots and diodes and capacitors in the rotator
unit itself, but the gear that drives the gear that is mounted on the
rotator positioning pot has started to split where the allen set screw
is positioned.
I talked to Telex and they said that not only do they not have any spare
parts for the 400 rotobrake, they don't have anyone who works there
anymore that remembers where Telex got these gears.
So.................I guess I need:
1) Somebody to go out to the barn next to unrestored
Pan America Ferrari and pull the gear out of the
old rotobrake and let me know how to get ahold of it.
2) Where to get some truth drugs to finally get some
information from Hygain - Telex. (What is the formula?)
or
3) An idea of who makes small gears and where to get their
catalog so that I can redesign this system.
There is no option 4) that says "replace rotator with {opt a - optz}."
A change out will require tower work in the top section of the crank -up
and all of my wife's curtain and furniture funding for several millenia.
No, I don't want to do selsyns again.
Thanks for listening to a frustrated mechanical engineer. If I was an
ME, I could probably do this myself. I'm an EE and you know what that
means in the Newtonian world.
Eric NV6O (for not too much longer)
edwoods@pacbell.com
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