It still works!

It is working! What a pleasant surprise!  I got this radio 9 years ago for a nice price, never tested it until this week.  I would say this radio was stored in a not ideal environment before I brought it, most of the non-painted external parts got rust on it.  I tried to clean out the rust but no luck.  I never expect it is still in working condition.  Last week, I decided to give it a try.  To my grateful surprise, it works 100% and goes strong.  

This radio is labelled as “10W Crystal Controlled SSB”; it is a USB only radio.  No military code name could be found so far.  The background is that in mid 70s, PLA gave requirements for third generation infantry radios. It has to be light weight, easy to operate/channel based and reliable. A 10 W SSB device went into development in mid-70’s targeted to replace the Silicon 2W (Type 73) Regiment-Battalion level SW transceivers. However, the development mat its difficulty in late 70’s since manufactory could not develop a reliable frequency syntheses device. A stop gap device was introduced, crystal controlled version of 10W SSB transceiver (with an industry name of XD-D2), in late 70s. This radio saw action in Sino-Vietnam boarder conflict in the 80s, but never adopted by PLA, the production quantity is very limited.

The control panel layout is very similar to that “10W Frequency Syntheses SSB” (TBR-130), it has a crystal box in place of the frequency setting knobs.  Inside this crystal box has 11 crystal sets for 11 channels.  The channels setting knob is directly below the crystal box.  In the middle of the control panel, there is a large dial to set frequency which was showing in a small window beside the knob.  Wait a minute, was it supposes to be a channel based crystal controlled radio?  Actually, this dial is nothing to do with frequency setting; it is one of two antenna tuning knobs.  The frequency reading just gives operator a starting point in antenna tuning process. 

The operating procedure is like this: After everything is connected, including battery, antenna, and handset, you turn the mode switch to CW mode, and the radio on by turn the volume control knob which is also the power switch and set the channel.  Turn the big dial in the middle to the frequency of your channel and push down the PTT, and adjust the antenna tuning knob at the very left to make the meter showing a peak reading, and then adjust the big dial in the middle a little to a maximum meter reading.  Then you are ready to go in either Voice mode and CW mode.