Talk:Clear Channel Ranger AR-3500
Re: Ranger AR-3500 Postby Ashtec » 01 Mar 2011, 23:40
source: http://www.transmission1.net/viewtopic.php?t=7041
""Here's a Little History On The Clear Channel Corporation People""
Sam Lewis of RF Limited/Clear Channel Corporation contributed some background info on the radio players in the 10 Meter radio market they associated or partnered with going back to 1969. The story is interesting and lends insight to how the 10 Meter radios evolved. Many AR 3300 and AR 3500 owners probably have no idea how deeply dedicated these people are to the radio business. They have strived to produce the best possible product while keeping it in reach of the average radio operator. Other companies broke the price barrier, but none ever matched the performance or operation simplicity of the Clear Channel Corp. Ranger transceiver.
Many people are still confused and think the AR 3300 and AR 3500 were made by RCI (Range Communications Incorporated). This is not true; Clear Channel Corporation developed the Ranger AR 3300 and Ranger AR 3500 and were produced for them by Nissei in Tokyo Japan. On the other hand Ranger Communications Corporation has there own factories in Malaysia and China, The RCI brand is brought in through their American subsidiary. RCI and CCC are two very different companies with different philosophies. RCI produces many other radios for other labels like Galaxy, Superstar, Connex, General, Virage, Mirage, and at one time even Cobra as well as others. Clear Channel on the other hand conceived, designed, and oversaw the production of the AR line of radios. These radios were developed to compete in performance with the big buck HF rigs. These radios were developed to meet the demands of the real amateur radio market as well as the 11 Meter market.
This is how the 10 Meter market evolved. In 1969, Herb Johnson of Swan Engineering produced the Cygnet 260, a 10-80m bare bones transceiver. It was basically a Swan 350-C with much of the circuitry eliminated to better compete with the new Japanese sideband rigs appearing on the market. At this time, CB radio was going great guns. Sam Lewis and his father, of Palomar Electronics, were producing the 546 sideband rig and eventually the Skipper 71, 73, 73B, and private labeled the 1046 for Swan. Herb removed all but 10 Meters from the Cygnet 260, added there most sophisticated VFO circuit, and replaced the final section with a single 6LF6 to increase the power output because the 260 only put out 60-Watts on 10m. He stared selling the radio as the Swan 1011. Sales of the 1011 went through the roof.
Someone else that went through the roof was Johnny Griggs of the west coast head of the ARRL (American Radio Relay League). Inside of six months, Griggs went down to see Herb several times threatening to have the amateur fraternity boycott Swan. Sam Lewis’s dad and Herb cooked up a deal, Swan would not market the radio, they would build the radio a under private label program under the Palomar Siltronix label. During this period, Palomar was also building VFOs for Baggys radio under his “Slider/Scanner” brand. Siltronix took over the marketing and expanded the distribution to their Palomar 2-step distributors. Up until then, the 1011 was only available through Swan amateur dealers.
Swan was bought out buy Cubic Corporation, a San Diego based conglomerate that mainly sold sophisticated communications equipment to the US government and military agencies around the globe. A couple of years after that, Cubic bought Siltronics from Palomar. At that time, Palomar hooked up with Les Ernshaw and started the Kachina project. At the same time, Palomar was in partnership with Communications Power Incorporated (CPI), developing the DigiCom, the first programmable CB radio, until the FCC, under pressure from Cobra and EF Johnson, told them they had to change the circuit, even though they (FCC) type accepted the radio. The partnership lead to the CPI radio and accessory lineup.
In 1980, Palomar died while the10 Meter market faded. However, the Palomar people continued in the amplifier business, making amplifiers for their friend Im, the owner of Sommerkamp. Sommerkamp had the European distribution sewn up. Im was also responsible for putting Yaesu Munsen (YM) on the map in the early 70’s. When he first visited Mr. Hasagowa in Japan, his main business mainly consisted of repairing color TVs in Tokyo. He had built a few sideband radios and was starting to build up sales outside Japan. Meanwhile, in the US a couple of guys started Spectronics East & West. They would drive around LA in a converted ambulance (circa Ghostbusters) delivering radios to anyone with the cash. Im made a deal with Mr. Hasagawa. Im put money into YM, in return, Im got total distribution rights for a specified period and all would bear the Sommerkamp brand. Im showed Mr. Hasagawa the one thing that put YM on the map, how to install the crystal for easy 11 Meter conversion.
Im had an engineer named Mr. Sakamoto in Japan. When the exclusive ran out in the late 70’s, Im had Mr. Sakamoto develop the TS788, Palomar/RF Limited supplied the MRF454 transistors and when the radio was available, RF Limited in exchange got the TS788 exclusive for the Americas. This was when I got involved with RF Limited, repairing Sommerkamp 788 radios.
The 788 was a compact 10/11 Meter transceiver with output power around 70 Watts PEP. The SSB transmission was not the cleanest on the market and there were many problems with the Circuit boards. It was a dual board radio with a wiring harness sandwiched between them. The boards were also phenolic double sided and the feed-thoughs were constantly breaking. Although this was a very innovative radio, it was a nightmare to work on. Im realized the magnitude of the problem and after a while abandoned the project
In 1982, RF Limited started developing the Ranger AR-3300. They wanted a fully computer controlled radio and at that time CMOS was the most readily available. NEC helped them along the way. The designer of the AR-3300 had also worked with Mr. Sakamoto on the TS788. The lead engineer designed the front end for most of the AOR scanners. That’s the main reason the 3300 and 3500 radios have such good front ends. These radios were built by a subcontractor to AOR, Nissei in Tokyo. The first production run was built in January 1984 and delivered in April 1984 and Clear Channel Corporation was born. The radios had warble problems and other issues. This is when they hired an engineer named Vic. Vic came aboard and solved the problems and continued to work for Clear Channel developing options for the AR-3300.
To overcome the low audio in FM, Vic developed the SP-1 speech processor, which works awesome in all modes. In addition, the SP-1a is now manufactured by Bob’s CB. Vic did some audio tailoring on the transmitter for all modes of operation. When you hear a 3300 or 3500, you can hear the results. On a properly tuned AR-3300 or AR-3500, the quality matches that of the most expensive HF rigs.
Then Vic developed the 100 Watt RF amplifier and made changes to the AR-3300 such as RF bypassing to insure clean operation. At that time, we were shuttling evaluation radios across the county from Clear Channel Corp to Bob’s CB and back. I was involved in testing Vic’s changes in different environments and played a small part in some of these ECOs. Then came the AR3500, which incorporated all the engineering changes that Clear Channel was adding in the US. The 100-Watt radios were converted 30-Watt radios, most were done at their facility in Washington State. Bob’s CB immediately became the East Coast Warranty center for Clear Channel certified to do all conversions including the 100-Watt upgrade. I, seeing one shortcoming of the radio, developed the memory NiCad battery backup BB-1.
Later Vic developed the CW-1 CW board with all mode adjustable power. Then he developed the SM-1 scanning mic board, which allowed frequency scanning from the microphone. This is why there are 4-pin and 8-pin wiring codes for the AR-3300 and AR-3500 radios. Any 3300 radios with the 8-pin connector have more than likely been changed during the installation of the SM-1 or SM-2 scanning mic board. During the middle of AR-3500 production, Clear Channel changed over to the 8-pin jack at production to eliminate that time consuming step during the installation of the scanning mic option. Both the CW-1 and SM-1 were improved and upgraded to the CW-2 and SM-2. Both had improved features and reliability.
The latest radios RF Limited brings to the Amateur platform are the Magnum radios, under the Magnum International label. All that needs to be said is the RF Limited folks continue to bring quality products to the communications market. Last edited by Ashtec on 01 Mar 2011, 23:54, edited 1 time in total. The Great Dictator Speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sv_ghkT ... re=related
mod for 2.9-30mhz scan
2.9 through 30 MHZ
- Press MANUAL
- Press ENTER
- Press 10K DOWN
- Press ENTER
- Press MEMORY - The frequency will read 2.933.0
- Press MANUAL
- Press SCAN PROG
- Press 1K UP or to scan in 10 K or 100K increments just press 10K or 100K.
- Press ENTER Twice
- Press 1MHZ UP Until the display reads 29.993.0
- Press other buttons to get 29.999.0
- Press ENTER - Your Finished
Radio will scan 2.993.0 to 29.999.9
NOTE: Do not scan above the frequency limit or the radio will lockup and you will have to reprogram the radio. You can scan down and the radio will loop back thru the high frequency and continue scanning down.
by RD250 » 21 Mar 2011, 14:49
Sorry to burst everyone's bubble about this radio but if this is the schematic for that radio
http://www.cbtricks.com/radios/clear_ch ... 00_sch.gif
Then it's nothing more than a 1970s CB with a fancy MCU controlled front panel.
i.e. the receiver boasts a feebly biased common emitter first RF amplifier followed by a weedy common base first mixer ('common base' as in LO injected at the base, with RF at the emitter and IF out at the collector).
It also appears to have varactor tuned preselection which presumably has poor IMD performance. It has the usual RF AGC diodes at the front end etc.
Basically a 1970s uniden ripoff. All the stuff about AOR designing the receiver front end is either fantasy or maybe they added the varactor diodes to the front end BPF to give it tunable preselection.
Either way its no better than any of the Uniden clones.
As for it working down to 14MHz then that would probably just be a bug in the interface that lets you enter those digits. The schematic clearly shows the usual CB TR switch arrangement and this usually only works over a few MHz of bandwidth.
Also, I doubt the varactor tuned BPF will tune that far down.
Oh and the synthesiser design is crude and probably only works over a few MHz. You might get some life out of it on the 12m band but I doubt it will function much below that.
i must admint the receiver side of this radio is much better that my Yaesu FT1000 and the FT767
I seriously doubt it. I'd expect the input IP3 of the Ranger 3500 to be about -25dBm. i.e. rubbish.
I'd hope that the FT1000 was capable of an input IP3 of at least +15dBm. Apart from vastly superior signal handling the Ft1000 should have better AGC, better filtering, a notch filter, probably a more versatile noise blanker and less drift.
The front end uses the usual L match with a transformer winding fed to the first RF amplifier. I'd expect at least 1dB of loss in the front end up to the output of the L match (probably closer to 2dB)
The RF amplifier might have a NF of 3 to 3.5dB. So the overall NF of the receiver will be ballpark 6dB at best if you add a bit more noise for the rest of the receiver chain. I'd expect it to be more like 8dB.
In every other aspect of receiver performance eg signal handling and spurious rejection the TS-570 will be miles ahead of the AR3500 so not much point even comparing the data.
However, on FM many Ham radios show compromised performance as FM is often added as an afterthought and the bandwidth is usually too wide for CB use. Eg my TS430S was very poor compared to a CB on FM. So there will always be ham radios that perform poorly on FM.
Out of interest I did look up what the manufacturer claims for sensitivity for this radio and the figure for AM/SSB is 0.3uV for 10dB S+N/N This is approx -117.5dBm so the approx MDS is -127.5dBm.
If the SSB/AM bw is 4.2kHz (some of these radios are 2.6kHz bw on SSB) then 4200Hz is 36dBHz. So the approx noise figure will be 174-127.5-36 = 10.5dB according to the manufacturers specs.
It also quotes 0.5uV for 12dB SINAD for FM and if I assume 7kHz bw on FM then the noise figure also calculates out at close to 10dB.
This is about the same as a mk2 148. I think I measured 10dB NF on my mk2 SS360 recently as well.
I also measured the input IP3 on the mk2 SS360 as about -25dBm on SSB with 50kHz spacing and I'd expect the AR3500 to be similar or maybe slightly worse due to the varactor tuned stages in the front end. However, I'd expec the first mixer to be the weak point (as per the 148)
I saw a quoted SSB sensitivity for the TS570 in the official manual as <0.13uV for for 10dB S+N/N
This is -124.7dBm meaning the MDS is approx -134.7dBm
This is presumably measured with a 2.2kHz bw = 33.4dBHz
So the NF will be 174-134.7-33.4 = 5.9dB and this agrees fairly well with the ARRL lab measured results.
Back to the Ranger schematic...
C167 (18pF) and T1 form the L match for the front end. Pretty much all CBs do this. This network steps up from 50 Ohm to a high impedance. This inherently provides selectivity to protect the first RF amp from out of band overload and also provides a convenient point to provide the TR switch protection for the receiver. (the two AGC diodes double up as the TR switch crowbar in Tx mode)
Because the impedance is high here the AGC diodes D1 and D2 can produce a fair bit of AGC range but they also produce IMD when they start to conduct with AGC being applied. This is no problem for the current design as these diodes aren't the weakest link. But for a high performance front end they would become a weakness.
One problem with the L match is that it is narrow band so it looks like this radio can tune the L match according to frequency. But this uses a single ended varactor. Not ideal for IMD performance as varactor diodes aren't good news for high dynamic range.
Note: On a 148 the reason the first front end rx coil isn't screened is because this coil is the L match coil and it would lose Q with a screening can and increase insertion loss (and degrade sensitivity) So that's why the first coil in a 148 has no can fitted :)
The secondary winding in T1 steps down the high impedance to match the lower transistor impedance. The RF amp is probably going to give about 15-18dB gain and this is fed into the following BPF T2 and T3. This again uses single ended varactors for tuning. Because of the gain of the amp and the high impedance of the filter I'd be concerned as to how much IMD gets generated in this filter. The high impedance means high RF voltage for a given Rx level and this will create IMD in the varactor diodes. Any IMD will be worse on the lower bands because the varactor bias will be a lower voltage.
Using a pair of back to back varactors would improve signal handling a bit but you'd have to back this up with other changes to make it worthwhile because the rest of the front end is also weedy.
Then there is the following first mixer. This looks very similar to the 148 mixer so will be pretty weedy for signal handling. All the above will contribute to a poor signal handling performance.
So you can see already that the whole front end is designed to a weedy spec for signal handling.
What is kind of amusing is the diode D8 in the 10.695MHz IF ahead of the SSB filter. This is biased exactly as per a mk2 148 and this diode switch is quite lossy due to the feeble bias through it. This circuit seems to have infected several Uniden clones. From memory the loss can be reduced by altering the bias network to bias it harder in rx mode. On a high performance front end this diode switch would generate IMD due to the poor forward bias level. But on a 148 or this radio it probably isn't the weakest link.
