Good morning all. I had actually ... completely forgotten this one.
About 2 years ago.... I put out a cry on my local community FB page..... looking for anyone that had old CB radios that they wanted to part with. Long story short.... my own DAUGHTER IN LAW saw it....and contacted a friend. The next day I had a phone call from a friend of my D-I-L that lives about 10 minutes from me....welcoming me to drive over.
What he had was a "new in the box" Realistic TRC-57... a 23 channel SSB radio. HE used to teach basic electronics in a school system and one of his students gave it to him... told him that it never worked. The guy intended to fix it some years back...but lost interest. When my D-I-L called him..... he said I can just have it.
Smelled all new and everything! HERE is the problem......
when you turn the volume control to power it on.... there is "no click"!!!!
A HA!!!!!! The switch on the back of the pot is bad!!!!!! So I took it down to get to the back of the pot, jumpered across the switch with a cliplead....boom! ON it came! Nice and frisky sounding!
Figuring "this should be EASY to find!".... I clipped the cables right at the lugs on the pot and removed it.
What I was holding in my hand..... was a dual 10K pot with an SPST switch on the back. It is a dual pot...but a single shaft... NOT dual shafts! So it only had one knob....and when you turned it....both pots turned. The shaft is a 1/4 split splined... pretty common.
As it turns out...one is for the radio audio, the other is for PA audio. I thought that was kind of weird...but the SAMS confirmed it. So I went on a search.....and can not find one. I checked Mouser and a number of premium parts suppliers.... no joy. I found several base/mobile radio specialty places...had millions of parts for CB/Ham radios of various kinds...... not this one! Tried on Ebay.... no joy. Amazon.... nope!
Discouraged, I thought.... wonder if I can fix it. The answer....... NO. I guess I just wasn't good enough/patient enough/steady enough....but when I released the switch body from the back of the pot...the thing did a mild explosion......and I could NEVER get it back together again. File THIS ONE in the folder marked...."bit off more than he could chew".
I know this is not a particularly tough problem....but I am soliciting ideas for the best way to "fix" this.
The best would be find a small size (what are they 17mm? 15mm?) dual pot (single shaft) with a switch on the back, wire it in .... and we are done.
I could always just solder the existing pot BACK in and wire the power leads out to a new SPST switch somewhere.
I could always find a single 10K with a switch and wire up only the radio audio to it (would probably never use PA on it anyway!).
I would be interested to hear of any other solutions that might occur to some of you that might be even better than any of my compromised ones.
What do you think?
[EDITED TO ADD]
one more note: I just had the presence of mind to go open the SAMS for it......
VR14 in the parts list... ONLY says 10k. There are no part numbers.... the way all the OTHER pots do!!!!! This one ONLY... has no part numbers.
Got it out and took a couple of pics.
Bob
About 2 years ago.... I put out a cry on my local community FB page..... looking for anyone that had old CB radios that they wanted to part with. Long story short.... my own DAUGHTER IN LAW saw it....and contacted a friend. The next day I had a phone call from a friend of my D-I-L that lives about 10 minutes from me....welcoming me to drive over.
What he had was a "new in the box" Realistic TRC-57... a 23 channel SSB radio. HE used to teach basic electronics in a school system and one of his students gave it to him... told him that it never worked. The guy intended to fix it some years back...but lost interest. When my D-I-L called him..... he said I can just have it.
Smelled all new and everything! HERE is the problem......
when you turn the volume control to power it on.... there is "no click"!!!!
A HA!!!!!! The switch on the back of the pot is bad!!!!!! So I took it down to get to the back of the pot, jumpered across the switch with a cliplead....boom! ON it came! Nice and frisky sounding!
Figuring "this should be EASY to find!".... I clipped the cables right at the lugs on the pot and removed it.
What I was holding in my hand..... was a dual 10K pot with an SPST switch on the back. It is a dual pot...but a single shaft... NOT dual shafts! So it only had one knob....and when you turned it....both pots turned. The shaft is a 1/4 split splined... pretty common.
As it turns out...one is for the radio audio, the other is for PA audio. I thought that was kind of weird...but the SAMS confirmed it. So I went on a search.....and can not find one. I checked Mouser and a number of premium parts suppliers.... no joy. I found several base/mobile radio specialty places...had millions of parts for CB/Ham radios of various kinds...... not this one! Tried on Ebay.... no joy. Amazon.... nope!
Discouraged, I thought.... wonder if I can fix it. The answer....... NO. I guess I just wasn't good enough/patient enough/steady enough....but when I released the switch body from the back of the pot...the thing did a mild explosion......and I could NEVER get it back together again. File THIS ONE in the folder marked...."bit off more than he could chew".
I know this is not a particularly tough problem....but I am soliciting ideas for the best way to "fix" this.
The best would be find a small size (what are they 17mm? 15mm?) dual pot (single shaft) with a switch on the back, wire it in .... and we are done.
I could always just solder the existing pot BACK in and wire the power leads out to a new SPST switch somewhere.
I could always find a single 10K with a switch and wire up only the radio audio to it (would probably never use PA on it anyway!).
I would be interested to hear of any other solutions that might occur to some of you that might be even better than any of my compromised ones.
What do you think?
[EDITED TO ADD]
one more note: I just had the presence of mind to go open the SAMS for it......
VR14 in the parts list... ONLY says 10k. There are no part numbers.... the way all the OTHER pots do!!!!! This one ONLY... has no part numbers.
Got it out and took a couple of pics.
Bob
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