🔴 Racal-Dana 2101 Microwave Frequency Counter Repair - No. 811

[@GregM]

Nice to not have to go down a rabbit hole for this repair.

[@TheDefpom]

Yeah we wouldn’t want to waste time chasing a RF fault by mistake 😬

[@TheRadioShop]

Nice fix!

[@TheDefpom]

Thanks Buddy.

[@IanScottJohnston]

Nice fix.....sooo many caps bad wow!

[@TheDefpom]

Yeah that was surprising, it just helps justify replacing ALL capacitors in a bit of gear rather than testing and replacing as required.

[@IanScottJohnston]

@@TheDefpom Yup, I got rapped by folks for replacing much of the caps on the Rupert Neve 5042 Tape Emulator I repaired......but there's a lot to be said for a "proper job" thats gonna be reliable for years to come.

[@TheDefpom]

@@IanScottJohnston when I’m working on a bit of old gear like this I’m not only trying to fix a fault, but refurbish it so it will last another 10-20 years without more caps going bad. I am actually revisiting my Fluke 353A right now, I didn’t replace all the caps in that when I fixed it a few years ago, seems the ones I didn’t replace are failing now!

[@wilcostienezen9403]

Nice done, capacitor that is most of the time tot check.

[@TheDefpom]

I've never had so many bad caps in a single unit before.

[@andymouse]

Terrific !...cheers.

[@TheDefpom]

It was a fun one.

[@davidv1289]

Nice work, Scott! Phillips - the Rifa of electrolytic crapacitors I guess.

[@TheDefpom]

Yeah it seems that way!

[@oludayod7757]

Goodwork

[@TheDefpom]

Thank you, it was a surprise to have so many bad caps.

[@fredflintstone1]

you have to love capacitors, well done great work:-) are you home now?

[@TheDefpom]

Yep I’ve been back home since last weekend. I was surprised at how many bad caps there were... I’m going to watch out for Phillips ones in future.

[@cfcreative1]

Very informative.

[@TheDefpom]

Thanks

[@ptronix]

Strange you had so many bad caps, I've a racal Dana 1991 from same era, works perfectly never had to do a thing to it, that doesn't mean the caps are good of course

[@TheDefpom]

Check if they are phillips caps.... if they are it might be worth looking closer.

[@ptronix]

@@TheDefpom good idea unfortunately it's at the bottom of a pile with equipment stacked above it, & I don't use much these days as have a hp 53132 which is a better counter by far

[@zx8401ztv]

And i was screaming when you were finding bad signals, 'Check the power supplys yooo pillock" lol. You forgot what you always do, power source!. i had a bag full of philips crapacitors and they looked fine untill i checked them, oh dear most were loopy values. In the bin, well past there sell by date lol.

[@TheDefpom]

Well obviously you weren’t screaming loud enough! I did check ripple in the live stream with my multimeter, but it didn’t show anything, I shouldn’t have been lazy and I should have used the scope to begin with !

[@M0GLU]

Perfect job! Thanks for shared. The shit capacitors all time source of mistake issues.

[@kittsdiy]

OMG you got to be kidding me .. i have the same Racal Dana with same problem ( bought on a Hamfest in Germany couple years ago ) .. but never digged further in to it ... Guess what's back on my workbench tonight ....

[@TheDefpom]

Yep, change EVERY capacitor!

[@kittsdiy]

@@TheDefpom Done .. 80% was really bad .. but no luck my C port still not working . 325Mhz LO enanbled now .. Spectrum analyser shows spot on ... Mine is a little newer then yours . 1994 .

[@TheDefpom]

@@kittsdiy Have a close look for bad solder joints too, I did rework all the ones I was suspicious of, just to be sure (they were probably fine though)

[@kittsdiy]

@@TheDefpom maybe a stupid question .. how much dBm did you feed in to the C port ??

[@TheDefpom]

@@kittsdiy - my input would sense a signal as low as -25dBm reliably at 1GHz, it can accept 7dBm

[@allthegearnoidea6752]

Wow those capacitors were shockingly bad LOL no surprise. I haven’t had much luck with those Philips capacitors and always change them on sight now. Indeed never trust capacitors. I always shotgun the capacitors I don’t even waste my time fault finding until that’s done first.

[@TheDefpom]

Yeah that has to be the worse case of bad caps yet !