The FT-200 is a hybrid valve/transistor five-band transceiver from the late sixties. In Europe it was sold as the Sommerkamp FT250 and in the USA it was also known as the Henry Tempo One.
Power output is 100W from a pair of 6JS6A sweep tubes. There's also a low-level RF output available for transverters etc.
I got hold of one of these waybackwhen, shortly after I got the Argonaut. First fired it up on 1990-06-30 in a round-table with Johan ZS6PH, Frans ZS6FMC and Jacques ZS1PL. Frans and I were on CW, the other two were on SSB.
Incidentally, there are at least two versions of the FT-200. The presumably later model has a 7 pin external VFO socket on the back, next to the accessory socket. Mine has this.
So in 2015 I hauled the FT-200 out of the container where it had lived since 2001, started cleaning it up a bit.
The preset adjusting shafts went brittle with time and broke off at the pressure point. This happened with both the Bias and the Meter Zero pots.
Fortunately Communica stocks the CA14NH5 replacements.
But they're a bitch to replace.
At the same time, I also replaced all the electrolytic capacitors. Some of them had definitely dried out, and at the cost (some R25 for the whole lot) the shotgun approach makes sense.
Here's a review by Colin Guy G4DDI from the VMARS newsletter
The FT-200 has a low-level RF output connector on the back panel for use with a transverter. To use this, the filament supply to the finals has to be disconnected via the accessory socket.
Since I wanted to use the FT-200 with my PW Meon, I wanted to know just how much drive is available at the RF out socket. Since the FTV-680B was designed to work with the FT-200, that's the logical place to start -- and the FTV-680B needs 3V RMS into a 1k input impedance. Therefore it's not unreasonable to expect that the FT-200 RF out level is about 3V RMS.
The Meon needs 100mV at the mixer input, via a 1k drive level pre-set potentiometer which is good for 150mW. 3V into 1k is 9mW so the Meon is GTG with the FT-200.
You need HC18 crystals at 42.5, 43.5 and 44 MHz. Get them from Brian AF4K.
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