Wow that was quick ! The two Rochar instruments have already arrived !
Here they are... crappy pic but, in the flesh they look very nice... partly because I believe they have been subjected to some kind of cosmetic restoration work.
I am pretty convinced their dark blue cabinet were repainted. Was nicely done though, so I don't mind.
The shiny BNC connectors on the counter... up close were all black/tarnished originally, but the guy tried to clean them up. Little bits of the original black oxidisation are still visible towards the back of the connector where it's harder to reach. But that's fine, I would mostly likely have done juste the same, and would have ended up with a similar result.
The displays on both instruments is shockingly beautiful...then realised it was because tehy both have a crystal clear, smooth, shiny, scratch free plastic orange colour filter.
I don't know if the guy polished them or if they were just lucky survivors... but it sure motivates me to polish it on my other Rochar TE, now I know what a difference it makes to the "presence" these instruments can ooze.
Gave them a quick test ride of course....
COUNTERWell, just like my other such counter that I bought 3 years ago already... it works perfectly out of the box, and even far exceeds its specs !
Service manual gives it for 2.2MHz but I clocked it a solid 2.80MHz so about 30% extra B/W !
I guess Rochar liked to under -promise so they can over-deliver and make their customers happy...
DVMJust like my other 3 such DVMs.... it's defective !
Why is it all the counter works perfectly but the DVM never do ?!
- From cold, it acts weird, the display is free running and permanently overloaded.
Once warm after a few minutes, it recovers and starts to act normally.
- Readings are ballpark I would say. About 4% too high.
- There is zero-offset of about 10/15 counts which the corresponding trimmer on the front panel can't cancel out.
16 counts is not massive. Inside the meter there is a second trimmer for a coarser adjustement. Maybe that one needs tweakign a hair and that's all.
This offset looks liek it amounts for about half of the discrepancy.
The other half is probably the FSD calibration. that too can be adjusted from the front panel... .but I didn't try since it makes no sense unless you have zeroed out the meter first...
- The symbol display tube is dying. Very dim and a strange glow at the back of it near the glass the glass envelope.
Maybe I will get lucky and all that's wrong is the HV supply for that particular tube... will check for that, but I am not holding my breath.
So basically I have now 4 of these Rochar DVM in this format / series, and none of them work !
So I really need to move my butt and fix them.... at least one of them... then I have 3 spare ones to keep the first one running forever...
Nah, the goal is to fix all of them of course !!!