Wiltron 610C Sweep Generator
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If you detach the top
panel you'll discover the inside is upside-down (below is the
top view). Was this a result of mechanical engineering designed
to aid manufacturing or perhaps to supply a layout to allow factory
adjustments to be made?
I'm lucky that the plug-in unit
covers the most useful range of frequencies for general amateur
use (100KHz to 110MHz) as these sweepers can be configured to
handle lots of GHz. |
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On the right is the underside
view with the sweeper upside down with its lower cover removed.
It seems the circuit board adjustments
are made via these ten blue pots, one green and twin pot cores.
A power supply pot and a couple of others near the front panel
can also be seen.
I'm not too worried about those
capacitors as parts from equipment of this vintage (early to
mid 1970s) will be fine. Also, it's unlikely I'll be dealing
with a microprocessor.
Not that they're unreliable,
but if one does fail the equipment is usually written off.
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Below is a view showing
the mechanical tuning arrangements. No complicated firmware..
just a few dial cords coupled to pots enable one to select the
sweep range and a marker position. |
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Here, on the right is
a view of the equipment label and below is the attenuator. |
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Below the rear view with covers
detached. |
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On the right is shown
the area adjacent to the plug-in cicuit boards being part of
the 100KHz to 110MHz plug-in unit. Controls connected to the
circuit board are marked for "level" control which
apply to the ALC circuitry.
The box shown below is fitted
to the rear of the plug-in unit and seems to be a custom mixer
module made by Wiltron. Probably the interface between the optional
plug-in and the mainframe frequency standards. |
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Everything looked OK when
I switched it on... at least there was no smoke etc so I decided
to test it using my spectrum analyser.
The mains lead uses the 1970s
US standard. Green for safety ground, white for neutral and brown
for live.
I set the dial to run from around
30MHz to 50MHz with the marker set at 40MHz.
It worked perfectly with all
the controls seeming to work. Click the
picture below to see a short video. Note that to play it
the right way up I used PotPlayer as the default program for
playing an MP4 file. VLC ran with weird colours and sideways. |
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The front panel controls
are mainly self-explanatory. Shown is the setting for a 10-1
second sweep with the scan going from F1 (red-coded knob) to
F2 (orange-coded knob). The output correctly followed the attenuator
markings (set to -10dBm). It seems to be an ideal equipment for
testing filters or a receiver IF response and one can use an
oscilloscope or a spectrum analyser.
The front panel shows "CW",
but around the back (picture below) are several inputs including
external AM and FM which I assume will allow the use of an analogue
voltmeter meter connected for example to a receiver AM detector
for performing an IF alignment. |
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