On 7/26/20 2:02 AM, WA6KNW RICH wrote:
On Saturday, July 25, 2020 at 11:48:04 AM UTC-7, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
I just picked up a couple of really nice boat anchors at an
auction house that was forced to shut down by recent events.

An AR-88 and an R-96/SR.

Other than obviously needing retubing, I have a couple of
questions.

First, the simplest one. Is there any source for the S-meter
for the AR-88. Mine is the model without it and while it isn't
really needed to use the radio it would be nice.

The second is stranger. I got two manuals for the R-96/SR.
mine is different from both of them. While there is a hole in
the front for the crystal switch, there is no switch, there are
no crystal sockets and most important, there are no numbers on
the face plate where the switch would have been. Has anyone
ever seen one of these? Is it an older model or a newer model
and the crustal option was eliminated? One other question, I
guess. Are parts available for this one, too? The dial bezel
is missing and so is the power connector. Again, neither is
really needed to use the radio but it would make it look nicer.

Oh, yeah. Both work. The AR-88 picks up a lot but doesn't
seem to have the power to drive a speaker. manual says it
only had 2.5 Watts of audio, so maybe that's normal but it
works great with my H-227/U headset. The R-96/SR picks up
some stuff, but I think only strong signals and even some
of them on MW don't come in. Defintely needs retubing.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

bill
KB3YV

Which manuals do you have for the R-96?

I have TM 11-878 and TM 11-878A which cover the R-96 and R-96A
neither of which actually match the radio I have.


The speaker output for the AR-88 is 600 ohms.

Actually, the speaker output is 2.5 ohm. The 600 ohm was a
line output intended to drive things like the PA set you heard
on MASH. R-390's had 600 ohm Line Out as well. I have a number
of old low impedance military speakers but none of them have any
volume. I have nothing to test the 600 ohm line out with at the
moment.
I should also mention the I have the diversity version of the AR-88
which I think was called an AR-88F and there does not appear to be a
manual available for this specific model either but for general use
the existing RCA manual does the trick.

bill
KB3YV