Micro-Tel MSR-902C Microwave Surveillance Receiver: power back on – first signs of (extraterrestrial?) life

Today, a few spare MJ12002 transistors arrived. No time to lose, and put them into the power supply. Note that the new transistors are 1983 data code, whereas the Micro-Tel originals were 1988… fixing the power supply with old parts, but no reason to assume that these transistors have any issues with age. With such power supplies, I would always suggest to use a pair of transistors of the same manufacturer, rather than mixing up two very different devices. This is why both transistors were replaced, not just the defective part.

msr-902c 8322 mj12002

After this replacement, connected a 10 Ohms 25 Watts load resistor, and grounded the Interlock and ON/OFF lines. When powering up, the green AC ON light comes on, but not for too long. Look at the set of fuses sacrificed in the process:

msr-902c pwr supply rep fuses

Another set of tests – no issues found, all working fine. Something must be loading the power supply, and I can’t get any negative voltages out of it – but there must be at least one negative rail to provide -15 V to the various opamps in the receiver.

Not to long and the culprit was found – a shorted tantalum, a T310 series Kemet tantalum, directly at the – what turned out to be, -18 V output. Check out the date code. Why did Micro-Tel put a 1979, week 38 dated device, in such kind of expensive and specialized equipment (other parts suggest that this unit was made about 1989, at a price of about $40-50k – that’s about $70k in today’s dollars…).

msr-902c tantalum

Some tests show that there is a +18 V, -18 V, and a +12 V output. All are routed through feed-through capacitors. A fair bit of effort, and cost!

msr-902c pwr supply output

First test with the actual receiver connected –

msr-902c first pwr test

– connected the 1-18 GHz tuner – a bit of a cable mess.

msr-902c test setup

To test the basic functions, like, IF chain, detectors, etc, a 1.5 GHz test signal from a HP 8642B was routed to the tuner. And, to my greatest satisfaction, the MSR-902C is actually receiving!

msr-902c receiving 1.5ghz

1 kHz AM modulation…

msr-902 receiving am

… also tested the FM and AM detectors, both in sweep and fixed modes, the AFC, the IF gain, the marker – all working. Also the 8-12 GHz, and 12-18 GHz ranges, working fine. Clear signal down to -105 dBm input. So all working and pretty well tune.

msr-902c 8 to12 range

Unfortunatly, this is not the case for the 2 to 8 GHz ranges – the frequency display is not showing a reasonable value – not sure what is going on here. Maybe something with the band logic, or the signal multiplexers (see the MSR-904A repair story – these instruments are notorious for defective CMOS multiplexers).

msr-902c 2 to 8 ghz ranges defect

So far, so good – at least in some bands, we would receive satellites, or signals from other galaxies, given, there aren’t many strong sources out there, in space, and all the other solar systems, too far away!

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