Wiltron 610C Sweep Generator

 

 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.
 

 

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.

 
 

 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.

 

 

 Here, on the right is a view of the equipment label and below is the attenuator.
 

 

 

 

 

Below the rear view with covers detached.

 

 

 

 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.

 

 

 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.

 

 

 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.

 

 

Click to see the Instruction Manual

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