Restoring the Collins 180S-1

Next on the bench, a Collins 180S-1 antenna tuner found its place.

A friend of mine ask me to have a look and remove a Plexiglas plate someone had installed for some reason adding also the missing bank of 100pf capacitors.

He new nothing of its former owners, simply he wanted to be in original state rather this mistreated one.

He was wrong as it proved. The ATU wasn't mistreated but heavily vandalised.

Some one had try to make it working as Tee rather than the original Pi/L network and a lot of interconnecting wires were missing.

Easy to cut, difficult to replace and solder. 

I ordered from the Eastern Market the missing caps and load meself with tones of patience. Internet was my help the whole time with photos and useful articles.

Step by step I disassembly it by 95% being cautious not to made a bigger damage. Luckily enough there weren't  any unnecessary wholes made at the fascia or anywhere else so cosmetically it was going to fine.

And went!

It took me some time to figure what to unscrew and how in order not to make any damage and then  widen a bit the holes to pass the bolts of the new capacitor bank being different #number that the one already punched. Small stuff of great care.

Eventually everything fell in position, nothing went missing or surplus apart of a few bolts that the former owner had used for his mod. 

So another project came to a glorious end.

Enjoy the article and the photos and #staysafe

73 de sv3auw/m0lpt