Saaandyyy!!

[Fisherdude]

Sandy, when I get ready, I'm going to call in an AK marker! I'm going to ask you to give Rick a call, if you would. Can't hurt if somebody who owns two of every R-3XX ever made to put in a good word for me!

[saltwater]

price?

[Sandy G]

That radio could have EASILY gone for $750-1K-or more. Clean EAC, no obvious problems...If the seller had been a bit more savvy, he could have done REALLY well...Oh, well, the seller's loss is Clay's gain...Now you need to sign up on the R-390 list...LOTS of helpful info on there, too...You want I should send you a Signal Corps Depot Manual ? Study up on yr new playpretty? The "bugaboo" tube(s) in the 390 is the ballast tube, 3TF7. They are hard to find, but there are ways of getting around them. Similarly, the 2 voltage regulator tubes, 26Z5Ws, can be a BIACH, but again, there are ways around them, too. Biggest thing is they get VERY hot, & cook themselves. R-390As were designed, though, to be turned on & left on 24/7 for years-That's the way the Army ran them. You can expect a year or 2s service out of one if run that way, before a tube goes kerflooey. And THAT'S with 45 year old tubes, that may already have several lifetimes of "civilian" service on them. Another couple of bothers are the funky antenna connector, & the 600-ohm audio output. But what we do in a pinch is to simply stick an antenna wire into the connection, jimmied in w/a paperclip...Ratshak used to have a 1K ohm>8 ohm audio transformer that worked well. And a good, hot R-390A doesn't need much of an antenna-they'll do pretty good w/about 10-12' or so or speaker wire draped over the curtains...Maybe stuck outta the window for good measure...(grin)

[Fisherdude]

I assume this one would have gone in the $1,000 range, give or take. After the holidays I'll take some time to do some dusting and wiping, and I'll post more pics.

Keep in mind if I hadn't picked it up (sort of) locally, the shipping would normally be in the $100-120 range.

I paid $500 for it. And I'm still giggling.

Somebody just bought one in a cabinet, which is very hard to find, for $2,500.

The previous owner made a neat antenna connector, with a PL-259 that connects to the radio, and a coax connector that connects to the PL-259, so I can use anything I want. So naturally I have the end of the antenna wire stuck in the hole!

Haven't found the 390 list yet. I'm a member of the Hallicrafters list. Got a link or address?

[Fisherdude]

Oh, and it included a very nice sounding speaker with a correct audio transformer to correct the impedance mis-match!

[radioactive]

$500 bux WOW.you stole it as far as i'm concerned.enjoy your new toy.

[Sandy G]

Yeah, you did. You can put that back into it w/Rick, & have a radio that yr grandchildren's grandchildren will be using...In civilian use, they just don't wear out, or give much trouble. Another good thing about one is that they were designed to be relatively easy to work on, by people w/little training, because of the modular assembly. They were expensive-About $3500-4500 in 1955, & the last ones made in 1984 were supposedly an astounding $30K each...The CY-979 mil-spec cabinets are neat, but I prefer a Bud desktop that has an opening lid, which can be cracked open for ventilation. You CAN get pretty decent audio out of one-the Signal Corps specs set up the audio for voice, & they sound tinny. There's a "Death Cap" that can take out one of the Collins mechanical filters if it dies,-And you DON'T want THAT to happen- but given their complexity, R-390As are quite robust, especially for tube gear. There's a twice-told tale that the gummint keeps a stash of them in case of WW3, EMP damage would likely render solid state electronics inoperable, but R-390As are like cockroaches & Cher-they'd survive, unless melted by a fireball, or the electricity went off. In the 1st Desert Storm war, static electricity produced by the sand was making hash of the front-ends of the latest gee-whiz radios the Army had, but it didn't bother the old 390s a bit. An order went down to locate & prepare a bunch of 'em for the fighting, but it was all over with before anything ever really transpired...

[Army]

Very cool Clay, good for you

[Fisherdude]

Hijack alert...

Anybody else besides me watching that SX-28A auction?

Not only is it the best one I've ever seen, but it's clearly going to set a new world's record.

[Sandy G]

Wow !! That IS a purdy SX-28A...I'd still be leery of the caps in it, though.

[Sandy G]

One of my R-390As is in that class. It's a 1955 Collins contract I "stole" out from under Phil Sellati, the bossman at Fair Radio. Sent it to Rick, he told me I didn't have a radio, I had a frequency counter. Most 390As are "depot dawgs", are made up of modules from several different contractors. This one, however, was all intact & all Collins, & pristine. The folks at Fair could only say it was purchased locally, Rick thought it might have been at Wright-Pat AFB in some lab & saw little use. He offered me $5K or 2 of his museum-grade restorations for it. I respectfully turned him down...

[Fisherdude]

All Collins is definitely the ideal. I don't think I'm going to shoot for "one of everything", though!! That could get kinda pricey.

[Sandy G]

Collins actually made very few R-390As, only in the early 1955 contracts, & then no more. They DID make quite a few of the earlier R-390s, though. But if you run across an R-389, or an R-391, they made ALL of those. There were, however, only 750 or so R-389s, & about 1300 R-391s made. The R-389 receives from 15 to 1500KC, & the R-391 is nothing but a std R-390 w/an Autotune mechanism. There was also an R-392, a Jeep-mounted version of the R-390, that works on 28 VDC. They get kinda warm in use, are in an unventilated waterproof case, makes a dandy warm-yer-buns campstool...

[mr_fixer]

I picked up a R-392 on CL about 8 months ago. It was made under contract by Western Electric. The radio was in mint condition except someone had loosened the locking collars on all of the coil drives. It makes me wonder if that was their way they de-militarizing the set. it took me 5 hours to sync all the drives back up, after that it worked perfect. It didn't need any replacement parts, Go figure. Logan

[Sandy G]

That's typical-the 1st thing people do when they get an R-3XX is they wanna "align" it. You DON'T want to mess with the tuning slugs in one of these, the gears or the cams. You WILL bollix it up if you try. These radios, w/their tuning slugs, 3 or 4 stages of gain, etc, etc, DON'T work the same way as an All-American Five does...Well, they DO, but its kinda like the difference between "Lightning" & "Lightning Bug"....If you have the Army repair manual, a VTVM, a scope, a sig gen & some radio repair experience, you CAN "align" one of these things, but typically, that's not the problem in the 1st place...