{"id":7560,"date":"2016-04-29T11:01:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T01:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2016\/04\/29\/reduction-redux-searching-for-some-smooth-spin\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T23:07:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T13:07:26","slug":"reduction-redux-searching-for-some-smooth-spin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2016\/04\/29\/reduction-redux-searching-for-some-smooth-spin\/","title":{"rendered":"Reduction Redux: Searching for Some Smooth Spin"},"content":{"rendered":"
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OK, here is yet another picture of my Mighty Midget’s Mate receiver, this time with yet another main tuning dial. I gave up on the large reduction drive on the right — it worked fine but was very stiff. I cracked open a smaller version of this very common Japanese-made reduction drive, but in this smaller one I was kind of surprised to find a Jackson Brothers drive in there. I now had three of these beauties available — all of them worked fine but with considerable difference in ease of turning. I picked the one that was easiest to turn. <\/b><\/div>\n

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I had to cut the main shaft of the beautiful Hammarlund 35 pf variable cap that I am using. This was dangerous, because of the risk of messing up the delicate bearings. I stayed out of trouble by putting the tip of the shaft in a vise and then cutting the shaft with a small coping saw. This prevented any force from being transferred to the bearings. It worked. <\/b><\/div>\n

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I was careful to try to line up the shaft and the reduction drive as closely as I could. <\/b><\/div>\n

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I needed something to serve as the tuning indicator. I used one of those small CDs that often carry the drivers for cheap electronic devices. It fit nicely. A standard sized CD was too big. <\/b><\/div>\n

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The final element was the knob itself. I had an old Drake 2-B knob in my junk box (who sent me that?). It was perfect and added a nice touch of soul to this old-new machine. <\/b><\/div>\n

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I built this receiver in 1998 and when I finished it I thought it was pretty good. But it is much better now. It has a nice 455 kc Toyo Crystal-Mechanical filter. The tuning ranges on 40 and 75 now line up perfectly with the phone bands. It now has a fuse in the power supply. And the tuning is now SMOOTH. <\/b><\/div>\n

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OK, here is yet another picture of my Mighty Midget’s Mate receiver, this time with yet another main tuning dial. I gave up on the large reduction drive on the right — it worked fine but was very stiff. I cracked open a smaller version of this very common Japanese-made reduction drive, but in this … Continue reading “Reduction Redux: Searching for Some Smooth Spin”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,176,262],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drake-2b","category-hammarlund","category-mccoy-lew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7562,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7560\/revisions\/7562"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}