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"Gold Mine" weekend for Bob....

guitar_199

Sr. Member
Mar 8, 2011
896
1,173
153
Deer Park, TX
Found a deal that seemed worth the risk. A ham that lives about 6 miles away had a deal posted on Craigslist. We met Sunday morning and "did the deal".

All told there were two (yep! 2) Realistic TRC-458 radios, one stock R/S mic, a Turner Plus 3 in beautiful physical shape, a Midland antenna tuner, and a JC Penney POWER/SWR/MOD meter.

One radio has 4 switches on the right side for extra channels. He was the original owner of this radio and it was his "daily driver" until he stopped using it 10 or so years ago. He tried to get it to work .... said that it did put out carrier but something was scratchy/not quite right in mic audio modulation.

The other radio is one that he bought later and to the best of his knowledge is unmodded. I have not been inside the case to evaluate that but there are no external switches (of course they could have Re-purposed some of the front switches... we will see.

Both radios look really good. Dusty.... but no scratches/rips/gashes/scrapes/cracks or signs of mayhem.

As mentioned the Turner mic is really in good shape so I am not particularly scared of it.

Al of this......$100. He originally had it up for $200 but it never sold (maybe as he was so far away from the city? I don't know). But he dropped it to $100 a few weeks ago...and I just happened to see it last week.

Oh...and he also had a folder with the "truth chart" for the switches on that first radio.
 

This afternoon... I took some time to throw the "unmodified one" (that the guy said definitely checked and works....) on the bench for some quick checks. He was right... it seems to work.

RF Generator in... it is dead on frequency (just by observation only). switch the radio to one channel on either side and the tone is gone!

On the transmit side.... I noted that the TX meter on the radio does not work....the RCV side of it DOES work..... so TX is not making it to the meter. BUT..... an external power meter shows 4 1/2 watts into a dummy load...and the spectrum analyzer shows VERY little harmonic trash. There IS a small bump out at 54 Mhz but it is easily about 55 dB down from the carrier.

Pots are dirty and could use a cleaning.... but this thing is looking pretty good from where I sit!!!
 
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I don't know if anyone will see this....but yesterday... I put the 2nd TRC-458 on the bench (the "modified one... w/extra channels") and IT WORKS. Receives well, transmits good power (again about 4 1/2 watts) all the way across the tuning range that I can see.

I may remove the extra channels though as the "mapping of switches to channels" is really weird and it boggles my mind that to get the normal 1 - 40 I have to use different switch positions. I would rather just have straight up 40 channels than go through this every time I change channels.

But that seals it! BOTH radios in this deal worked.... as did the JC Penney PWR/SWR/MOD meter as I used it in the checkout.

Not bad at all... I don't think.
 

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