In article . com,
says...
There is no excuse for a penny pinching move like that in an expensive
radio. My opinion of Japan Radio just went down a couple of notches.


Pete KE9OA wrote:
Those filters were pretty awful................I don't remember the
name of
the company name, but it started with the letter K.
They were used in the NRD-515 and in the Yaesu FRDX-400. They were
filled
with some sort of foam substance that turns to a sticky jelly after
many
years, causing the insertion loss of the filter to degrade. Peter
Bertini
had an article in Popular Communications a few years ago on how to
repair
them. I did just that for a friend's FRDX-400. You have to dismantle
the
filter and clean out all of the goo with alcohol..........I used a
product
called Flux-Off.
Afterwards, you have to replace the foam damping material. I used air

conditioner foam strip. Another thing about those filters....there is
no
other mechanical support for the filter elements themselves. When you
remove
the goo, you have the filter structure hanging by a few strands of
Litz
wire. For years, I was looking for an NRD-515 until I discovered
those
filter problems. I have never seen a Collins mechanical filter fail
in that
manner, and I have had quite a few of those filters over the years.
If any
of you ever have the problem with your JRC radios that use that
filter, I
can give you advice on how to repair them.....................if you
don't
feel comfortable repairing them yourself, I can repair them for you.
I did have one of those 2515 in for repair a couple of years ago, and
the
unit that I repaired did not have any mechanical filters even though
the
advertising hype stated that it did. It was definitely one of those
slightly
oblong I.F. transformers that had the ceramic filter inside the same
structure.
For a cheap receiver, they weren't bad.
Anybody remember the transceiver that matched this unit in style? A
friend
once told me that it was a Kenwood TS-510 with Allied's label.

Pete

wrote in message
ups.com...
There was a Japanese company that made a smaller version
of the Collins Mechanical fitler and I htink it looked like your
discription. Poptronics ran an article int he mid 1960s about
how to add one to your existing SW receiver. I
Terry





Hmm, never heard this before about the 515 filters. My almost 25 year
old 515 works great, just needs a little alignment in the PBT circuit.
A friend's 20 year old one is fine and dandy too..

BDK

patgkz wrote:

What a horrid, miserable radio. I owned one brand new in 1971 as ordered
from Allied radio shortly before their demise.

The A-model has a bit more IF bandwidth due to one IF filter stage being
eliminated and replaced with a jumper wire on the circuit board. This spoke
volumes of the crappy design: imagine, the "improved" A-version actually
has less parts due to the fact that an entire stage in the IF was removed!

My 2515 model suffered from excessive drift, instability, bandswitch
glitching, microphonics, poor sensitivity above 20Megs, scratchy
pots.....and that was when the darned thing was NEW!

The A-model may be more desirable due to its selectivity being wider than
that of a razor blade. AM on my 2515 was absolutely miserable and devoid of
any detected audio above 1,500cps. It always sounded like you were
listening to a radio with a paper bag over your head.

No wonder Allied fizzled. This was the Company's last, dying attempt at
marketing a house-brand "communications" receiver. I can see why anyone at
TRIO would never admit to desingning the fool thing.

FYI: Allied made "Knight" tube radios during their heyday in the 1940s.
I believe the company is still around as Allied Signal; I think they
make Autolite brand spark plugs among other car parts.





"Michael" wrote in message
...
Anyone know the difference between the 2515 and the 2515A?

I wonder who built this rcvr? Trio maybe?

Thanks





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Michael Black wrote:


"patgkz" ) writes:
What a horrid, miserable radio. I owned one brand new in 1971 as ordered
from Allied radio shortly before their demise.

The A-model has a bit more IF bandwidth due to one IF filter stage being
eliminated and replaced with a jumper wire on the circuit board. This spoke
volumes of the crappy design: imagine, the "improved" A-version actually
has less parts due to the fact that an entire stage in the IF was removed!

My 2515 model suffered from excessive drift, instability, bandswitch
glitching, microphonics, poor sensitivity above 20Megs, scratchy
pots.....and that was when the darned thing was NEW!

The A-model may be more desirable due to its selectivity being wider than
that of a razor blade. AM on my 2515 was absolutely miserable and devoid of
any detected audio above 1,500cps. It always sounded like you were
listening to a radio with a paper bag over your head.

No wonder Allied fizzled. This was the Company's last, dying attempt at
marketing a house-brand "communications" receiver. I can see why anyone at
TRIO would never admit to desingning the fool thing.

I don't think it's unique to Allied. At that same period, a lot of
the old US companies and manufacturers went to solid state and Japan
for their receivers. The art hadn't developed much, and people wanted
cheap receivers. So you got a lot of junk, and in many cases it
wasn't made by the company, merely labelled with the company name.
I've heard it said that the companies were unable or unwilling to adapt
to solid state at the time, so rather than invest the needed research
and energy in solid state design, it was farmed out.

Virtually everyone had a low end solid state receiver at the time of
dubious quality. Something like the Hallicrafters S-38 was pretty bad,
but it was built with tubes and at least the designers knew tubes well.
It took more effort to make a good solid state receiver, and that wasn't
happening at the time, at least not at the low end.

My Hallicrafter's S-120A was horrible. I suspect that Ameco cheap
transistor receiver that tuned to 54MHz was likewise not very good, though
that's just a guess based on time an price. Lafayette, Radio Shack, probably
even Heathkit had similar receivers.

Of course, I'm less certain that such equipment killed the companies. I
suspect they were at the end of their long runs, and the fact that things
were changing and they didn't change with it helped.

By 1971 I suspect that most of the old companies were simply names to be
rented out, much like today. Most of the actual manufacturing was done
in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong by companies that dared not use their
actual Asian names on their equipment. That's why so many of the
Japanese companies used non Japanese sounding names on their stuff-the
memories of Pearl Harbor were still very fresh at that time, and
Americans didn't want to admit that Japan was kicking their asses on
consumer electronics. I suspect that the main selling point of the name
"Sony" was that is didn't sound like Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo. Same thing
with "Panasonic", which is still made by Matsu****a. (Can you imagine
the average American trying to pronounce "Matsu****a"? Apparently the
suits in Tokyo saw that coming and used the name National at first, then
Panasonic.)

Horrible quality wasn't a detriment when you were talking about a small,
four transistor MW only radio, but once SW got popular in the 60s and
the Japanese moved into that field the lack of design and quality really
became apparent.

On a side note, I heard on World News Tonight that there's virtually NO
manufacturing left in America anymore. All the jobs have gone to China.
Americans are using debt to prop up their purchase of Chinese stuff. I
wonder what will happen when that ends. China and the US need each
other-we buy their stuff, and they use our dollars to prop up Bush's
spending spree. So basically the two governments are using massive debt
to prop each other up, and eventually the whole house of cards will
collapse. The Chinese are happy now, but support for the CCP is weak and
once the world stops buying their industrial output the commies will
REALLY be in trouble.


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I work in the TV elctronics universe, and I had a Sony sales rep tell
me that you are always better off buying a Japanese named product
because their NIST
required certain minimum standards. And I have seen the same VHS VCR
with a Panasonic name tag and RCA and GE that looked the same.
However the inside was very different. The USA versions had fewer parts
and
did not have anywhere near the signal to noise in the video playback.
I think the name of the organizaton was JIS.
Terry

"Pete KE9OA" ) writes:
Those filters were pretty awful................I don't remember the name of
the company name, but it started with the letter K.
They were used in the NRD-515 and in the Yaesu FRDX-400. They were filled
with some sort of foam substance that turns to a sticky jelly after many
years, causing the insertion loss of the filter to degrade. Peter Bertini
had an article in Popular Communications a few years ago on how to repair
them. I did just that for a friend's FRDX-400. You have to dismantle the
filter and clean out all of the goo with alcohol..........I used a product
called Flux-Off.

Of course, one pays quite a bit for Collins mechanical filters, and
that's always been the case. Those Japanese mechanical filters were
significantly cheaper, at least back then. Reading the old magazines,
I've sometimes wondered if at least some times people were calling
ceramic filters the wrong thing.

Your description of the insides reminds me that some guy wrote about
a homebrew receiver in the early sixties, I think it was in CQ, and
he made his own mechanical filter. No, I don't have it handy and
can't specify the issue, but every so often I come across the article,
and wonder how practical it was to do. It seems like we'd have
read more about doing it if it was something easily doable.

Michael

wrote:

I work in the TV elctronics universe, and I had a Sony sales rep tell
me that you are always better off buying a Japanese named product
because their NIST
required certain minimum standards. And I have seen the same VHS VCR
with a Panasonic name tag and RCA and GE that looked the same.
However the inside was very different. The USA versions had fewer parts
and
did not have anywhere near the signal to noise in the video playback.
I think the name of the organizaton was JIS.
Terry

The "RCA" and "GE" names are owned by Thomson, a French owned company,
and those VCRs were probably made in China. If the Panasonic was made in
Japan, and we're talking about VCRs that were on the market five years
ago, then the Japanese product wins every time. But Japan is so
expensive and bureaucratic to work in that all the big Japanese names
are shifting their manufacturing to China. Some well placed bribes to
CCP flunkies and you're in business, no worrisome environmental or labor
regulations, pay your workers 10 cents a day and dump toxic waste into
drinking water. It's a capitalist's wet dream, which is why everything
is now made in China. If you look back over the history of capitalism,
you'll see that the ruling class did the same thing to Europe and then
the US, with the difference being that the whites fought back, at least
for a while.


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The radio itself was pretty good.................I knew a fellow back in
Iowa that had Collins filters installed and he was pretty happy with the
result. I was going to match the impedance of the new filters to the '515
but I lost track of him. It is still my favorite of the JRCs.

wrote in message
ups.com...
There is no excuse for a penny pinching move like that in an expensive
radio. My opinion of Japan Radio just went down a couple of notches.


Pete KE9OA wrote:
Those filters were pretty awful................I don't remember the
name of
the company name, but it started with the letter K.
They were used in the NRD-515 and in the Yaesu FRDX-400. They were
filled
with some sort of foam substance that turns to a sticky jelly after
many
years, causing the insertion loss of the filter to degrade. Peter
Bertini
had an article in Popular Communications a few years ago on how to
repair
them. I did just that for a friend's FRDX-400. You have to dismantle
the
filter and clean out all of the goo with alcohol..........I used a
product
called Flux-Off.
Afterwards, you have to replace the foam damping material. I used air

conditioner foam strip. Another thing about those filters....there is
no
other mechanical support for the filter elements themselves. When you
remove
the goo, you have the filter structure hanging by a few strands of
Litz
wire. For years, I was looking for an NRD-515 until I discovered
those
filter problems. I have never seen a Collins mechanical filter fail
in that
manner, and I have had quite a few of those filters over the years.
If any
of you ever have the problem with your JRC radios that use that
filter, I
can give you advice on how to repair them.....................if you
don't
feel comfortable repairing them yourself, I can repair them for you.
I did have one of those 2515 in for repair a couple of years ago, and
the
unit that I repaired did not have any mechanical filters even though
the
advertising hype stated that it did. It was definitely one of those
slightly
oblong I.F. transformers that had the ceramic filter inside the same
structure.
For a cheap receiver, they weren't bad.
Anybody remember the transceiver that matched this unit in style? A
friend
once told me that it was a Kenwood TS-510 with Allied's label.

Pete

wrote in message
ups.com...
There was a Japanese company that made a smaller version
of the Collins Mechanical fitler and I htink it looked like your
discription. Poptronics ran an article int he mid 1960s about
how to add one to your existing SW receiver. I
Terry

Hmm, never heard this before about the 515 filters. My almost 25 year
old 515 works great, just needs a little alignment in the PBT circuit.
A friend's 20 year old one is fine and dandy too..

BDK

You will be able to recognize if it happens if you start experiencing
reduced sensitivity in the SSB modes. Not a big deal to clean and repack the
filters. About an hour and a half for both the LSB and USB filters.

Pete

Hmm, never heard this before about the 515 filters. My almost 25 year
old 515 works great, just needs a little alignment in the PBT circuit.
A friend's 20 year old one is fine and dandy too..

BDK

Come to think of it...........I wonder if it depends on the user
environment..........I just don't know.

Pete

I am not sure how hard they would be to make. I've got an old article that
Mr. Johnson of Rockwell Filter Products forwarded to one of the engineers at
Rockwell-Collins. There was a note included with the document saying "after
you read this, you will be an expert on Mechanical Filters". I have to dig
that up one of these days.
I remember the Motorola Permakay filter units that were in the Mocom 70
radios. I dismantled one the filter assemblies one day and found 14
individual ceramic filter elements, with an amplifier embedded in the
bundle. They were pretty decent units.
There were some pretty cool articles in those old magazines. I remember an
old in Ham Radio........the project was kind of a spectrum analyzer for the
FM broadcast band using a Bragg Cell Detector. After seeing that article, I
became a homebrewer.

Pete

"Michael Black" wrote in message
...

"Pete KE9OA" ) writes:
Those filters were pretty awful................I don't remember the name
of
the company name, but it started with the letter K.
They were used in the NRD-515 and in the Yaesu FRDX-400. They were filled
with some sort of foam substance that turns to a sticky jelly after many
years, causing the insertion loss of the filter to degrade. Peter Bertini
had an article in Popular Communications a few years ago on how to repair
them. I did just that for a friend's FRDX-400. You have to dismantle the
filter and clean out all of the goo with alcohol..........I used a
product
called Flux-Off.

Of course, one pays quite a bit for Collins mechanical filters, and
that's always been the case. Those Japanese mechanical filters were
significantly cheaper, at least back then. Reading the old magazines,
I've sometimes wondered if at least some times people were calling
ceramic filters the wrong thing.

Your description of the insides reminds me that some guy wrote about
a homebrew receiver in the early sixties, I think it was in CQ, and
he made his own mechanical filter. No, I don't have it handy and
can't specify the issue, but every so often I come across the article,
and wonder how practical it was to do. It seems like we'd have
read more about doing it if it was something easily doable.

Michael