Today I had some free time to repair a random item in my pile of broken stuff. In my scrap radio box I found a Superstar 360FM. This radio was given to me by an old CB'er who had tired of radio just as I was discovering it when I was about 15. All I knew of radio comms was my 40 channel Lake ManXMan which was an utter pile of crap, based on the GECOL chassis. When I received it, I powered it up, turned it onto Ch19 and saw that 'all the channels were scrambled' and other modes didn't seem to do anything (LOL). It went to the back of a drawer and the world of SSB and DX flew me by without me even noticing.
So, with the idea of getting it to work I laid it bare on my bench. Inside was a terrible mess of 6 band mods, a horrible 'matt' of 1n4148s, snipped wires, twiddled alignments, corroded potentiometers and damaged PCB tracks. The volume/SQ control was bent and smashed and unservicable. Two segments on the LED display didn't light up, some power came out, but it was about 15kHz off frequency.
I picked up a new vol/sq pot off ebay, fitted it, cleaned up the 6 band mod and diode matrix as much as I could (miraculously it actually worked), traced all the snipped wires and reconnected as per circuit diagram. It was far off frequency because a +10kHz signal line on the PLL had been cut. That bought it close enough to be aligned properly. I realigned everything that was necessary, back to stock configuration. Modulation controls were hilariously turned up, insane amounts. Back down to sensible levels they came. I discovered a missing crystal.. ah shit. The missing segments were actually dead, so a new display required.
Tested FM, AM, SSB all seemed to work ok on RX and TX. Realigned S meter. Re-enabled the snipped roger bleep :muhahaha:
Missing crystal doesn't seem to have broken the radio at all. I have no explanation for this. I have never seen a radio with a missing crystal work properly before... maybe it doesn't need them :rofl:
The front of the radio and knobs were soaked in Cillit Bang. 'Good as new'
For the rest of the 'restoration', I need a mic, small volume or mic gain knob, a dual 7 segment common anode display and a replacement mounting bracket and thumbwheel knobs.
You might ask why all this trouble for a radio that doesn't work where I want it to (29.6fm), that has no decent frequency readout and is generally a pile of crap. It would be a very good question that I can't answer!
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Originally Posted by mw0uzo
