RCI 6900f-150

[cobranut]

I've got a newer model of the 6900F-150 for sale in the classified.

 

[hotrod]

No, it's not hacked up. As you know, the freq's are changed by moving a diode/jumper - so there's no cutting of parts. The guy I bought it from had it set up for 10-11 meters, ir was also tweaked and peaked. Haven't put it on a meter yet - either. Since it has all of the major features that one would want, there is really no need for it. It is pretty new, has only a couple of nicks on it but missing the mic clip and a couple of thumbscrews. Bought it off a guy from eBay. Hooked it up to a K-40 and a power supply just to hear it recieve and play with the functions a bit. Never keyed it up, just checked it out. It really is an amazing bit of workmanship for the price. I'm impressed with it, really. The channel up/down on the mic was a mystery, until I took a closer look at it. Pretty neat how they did that imho.
you know that actually a power mic.i think these radios are very overlooked.

 

[Robb]

Yeah, I know about the power mic part.
This radio also has two mic inputs, so that I can run a D104 on one side, and the stock mic on the other.
You are quite right about being an overlooked feature-packed radio. I think it is a keeper. I don't plan on running it it full open either. I going to set it for a 1-2 watt dead key and let it schwingggg!

 

[hotrod]

yea i set my key a tad higher 5 watts swing 35-45 with topgun on.i found using
a 1-2 watt key with topgun can get a hair distorted so i been told.but if ya dont
use it then 1-2 will work great.AMAZING ssb radio love the fact it saves the channel
and mode as well

 

[Brian 264]

Hello: I have the 6900f150, and never had a problem. 4years plus.
Nothing but awsome reports, local and dx.
I have the one with the black rubber knobs.
I run a non amplified heil 2 element hand mic and a wilson 5000.
I will say that when the radio is first turned on,it's high on the frequency.
But after warmed up it comes right back down to dead center.
And I noticed on hot days if I were to turn it on it would already be dead center. But no drifting or birdie probs, just an awsome radio from day one.
Would I recomend a radio to a freind, ya the RCI 6900f150 great!

73's
Brian

 

[VA524]

RCI 6900F150 Alota Radio

Just got mine in my car today. Burned up 2 Wilson "Lil Wil" antennas, so don't go that route with this radio. The antennas say they handle 300 watts. BS! They both worked all of about 5 minutes, then SWRs went through the roof.
Bought and installed a Wilson 5000. Everything works fine and it is a MUCH broader banded antenna.
The radio I have gets way hot when on full power, so I keep it a little short of full. Some other minor glitches, but am getting great reports.
The Coarse Tune knob tunes your transmit frequency. Fine Tune just moves your receive. Takes a little bit but you'll figure it out. Once I did the problem everybody was talking about drift on transmit, went away. Remember this is digital read out. If your real close to being another number than is displayed, it will jump back and forth. No big deal.
Way fun radio. Worked lots of DX this evening and a few locals. Looking forward to more fun with this radio, hope you have some too.

 

[jazzsinger]

For what its worth, The 'birdie' noises are often the result of using a cheap switching-type power supply. No; I've never owned this Ranger; but I do own the lesser TR696FD1. After I bought a Samlex 1223 power supply, I read many reviews on it. Seems that if it was used on HF radios in particular; many reported the 'birdie' blues. So, I use it for the 2m/440 radio and it doesn't do that using those bands.

Makes a good argument in using a conventional old-school transformer/diode/tuned filtered/fully-regulated power supply.
Please notice that when the Ranger in question had problems - it was when being used on a base setup is when the problem seems to occur the most.
The guys who had the Ranger in a mobile setting didn't seem to have the same complaint.
Just two cents worth...

As Robb says many of those noises are infact induced by switchmode psu's. But some i found on the 3900 chassies and others were inherent in the radio itself, probably mixing products not suppressed well enough.

one things for sure if you want to find out the cause of those mysterious signals,

first unplug the antenna, if they disappear they are being picked up by the antenna,

then change the switchmode (remembering to unplug the unit, as some radiate rfi even when they are not having current drawn from them) to a standard transformer psu or a battery, if it disappears then its being generated by the switchmode psu.

if its still there the birdies are most likely generated within the radios mixing circuits, not much you can do about that unless you want to reverse engineer the radio or even better use a different radio that doesn't suffer from it.

i did find one switchmode psu that was so bad that not only was the noise being conducted along the dc cables but also being picked up by the antenna too, it was a nightmare to use, i suspected it was dodgy filter capacitors, but as i bought it second hand it was easier to return to seller than dick about trying to fix it. so i never fully got to the bottom of it.

the following day i replaced both the switchmode psu's i had with palstar ps15 transformer types and never had any more issues, some radios were affected by the psu's worse than others, even two radios with the exactly the same chassies didn't always get infected to the same degree. infact to put it mildly it was like listening too totally different receivers after the psu's were switched. i would never use a switchmode psu again on a radio.

 

[Tucker442]

I also had a 6900F25 one of the best recieving radios I have ever owned but that drifting on SSb really ticked me off it seemed it just never settled down I understand hot and cold but if I used it I was always turning the fine clairfier to keep it on. Nice radio just not for me the Magnum line works so much better for me that 6900 could not shine the shoes of a Omega or Delta Force