Continuing on this steep learning curve of hobby electronics , I found myself in need of a good tube tester and found a Hickok 800 at a reasonable price . Asked the seller if he would give me a demonstration of how it worked and the sneak tested a tube in front of me telling and showing me how the tube was clearly passing better then new by the needle being in the green zone . Sadly he was giving me a snow job because with the English wheel in that position should have been reading the micromhos scale not the red green scale . The meter was clearly showing me the tube was failing when I got it home in both testing modes . Being that this was a known good tube I now knew the meter was way off , like way way off . When selling his story was it's just a little lower then my other Hickok meter . And now his story is ,I told you it was 400-600 micromhos low , and you just need to twist some pots to calibrate it and get it working LOL .. The machine does not even have trimming pots that I could see . But the joke is on him because all it needed was for me to spray all the pots with Deoxit . I figured before doing anything too drastic I should cover the basics . Anyway I have seen many posts of guys having the same problem and my advise would be to clean the pots before doing anything to this old meter . In the end cleaning the pots raised my reading by 900 micromhos . So now the tubes that were failing are passing with flying colors and the ones that were marginal are actually exceptional tubes . I don't know why some guys feel the need to do thing like this just to make a few bucks , I told him I was just learning and asked for his guidance , He was clearly advanced in his knowledge and used that knowledge to try and take advantage of a beginner , He could have told me the truth and I still would have purchased it . Question now that I have the meter working well I see the meter has to ports for testing NPN & PNP transistors does anyone know what the leads look like that went with this machine , or did you just push transistors in the port . Not that I would use them a whole lot but like my meters to be complete . thanks Roger
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Well the story deepens , after feeling I had this meter pretty close I talked to a guy I met on this site that offered to give me a guiding hand from time to time . I told him I purchased the Hickok 800 and it came with a box of tubes 300 or so , mostly new in box . Knowing I have a HP power supply needing repair I thought I'd ask if he would be interested in giving me some advice on how to approach the repair if I were to bring it to him , told him I would be happy to let him have some of the tubes if he would help me separate the ones I would likely need for future amp building projects . So we set a date and I take the 8hr round trip to visit him . He told me to bring the Hickok 800 as well because he has calibrated tubes to check it . Well when I arrive he takes a look at the Hickok 800 and tells me it's way off . Ask him how much and he repeated "a lot" , was hoping he would at least give me a idea how much so I could try to adjust it a bit closer when I get home, nope he pulled the tube before I could even see the reading .Anyway next I figured I would show him the tubes I told him about , let him go through them and he pulled out 30-40 new tubes ,when I asked if he could help me pull some I could use he seemed to have little interest. likely because he already took most of the useful 6v and 12V stuff . Oh well I though lets get to the HP power supply because that's what he claims to do , figured if he can give me some useful information it's worth it . Sadly he only took a 1 min look at the HP power supply and tells me to leave it and the tube tester for repairs . I don't mind paying for repairs but found this upsetting because he knows I'm trying to learn how to do these repairs myself and was only looking for a bit of his time to ask for guidance and was willing to pay for it , . I see now he was just grooming the site looking for customers with the promise of helping them . He offers information but always cryptic and misleading , Then when you bring items to him he can't help and tells you to leave it for repair .. Wow I got into this hobby not long ago because I found it very interesting and have been doing quite well fixing amps but have to say every person I've dealt with so far has scammed me or tried to , not the type of people I am use to dealing with . I not knocking anyone running a business because I do but when your preying on sites and are taking advantage of guys doing this for a hobby that are reaching out for assistance , wow . Just wanted to give a heads up for anyone else that may get approached in this way to be careful . After this last ordeal I'm not even sure I want to continue with this as a hobby that's the real shame .. cheers Roger
While I very much appreciate your posts and that's something I'm interested in, your Borg like huge chunk of unformatted text does not appeal in any way to read it.
So.. could you please add a few paragraphs and formatting please?
So.. could you please add a few paragraphs and formatting please?
Sorry I'm dyslexic and do have great trouble with sentence structure, just trying to get the point across the best I can . Thank God for spell check or you would have a real problem with anything I have to say .LOL . I have to read things 10 times just to get it that close .. cheers brother
Well I have decided not to let a few scumbags and and scammers destroy my enjoyment of this hobby , figured sooner or later I will meet decent people in the field .. Anyway I took a deeper dive into the 800 and found that the English wheel seems to be causing most of the problems .. I removed the control and ran it in my ultrasonic cleaner for 20 min and it now seems to be working much better, was filled with a bunch of old dried out grease .. Also today purchased a calibrated Hickok YV-2 so I have something to give me a ball park idea of the accuracy of the Hickok 800.. Will have to do some reading on the TV-2 but it seems pretty straight forward to use .. The biggest complaint I here of the TV-2 is it's very slow to setup , No problem for me as I just do this as a hobby , I prefer accurate over fast for my needs .. pictures tomorrow ..
Here is the TV-2/U the only thing I can see that's missing is the spare fuse cap and the lenses for the Pilot and short bulbs , seems pretty straight forward to use , tested a few tubes and it seems to work very well .. spent a little time machining some new lenses for the bulbs , I'm sure I have one of those fuse caps someplace , don't really need it but it looks incomplete ..
