[time-nuts] Marginally off topic... Aircraft Automatic Direction Finders as beacon receivers.

[Tom Clifton]

Approaching off topic, but possibly of interest as Loran and WWVL is on the fringes of this...


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I have several dead King KR-85 ADF untis that I want to  repair and press into service as 505khz beacon monitors.  Designed primarily for receiving 200khz to 500khz non directional beacons, they came out of 1970's vintage private planes and to date I have not been able to come up with a service manual with schematics (short of paying $70 for a manual  at Esso Air). Is there any chance that anybody out there may be able to assist with at least a partial copy of a manual

These things are interesting - run on 12 volts, typicaly have an IF strip in the 150kc range and have a "digitally generated" vfo that has a TTL divider chain and a PLL for generating a sine wave.  BFO included!  And the front end  on these things have pretty good input filters divided into three bands - 200khz-400khz, 400khz-800khz and 800khz-1600khz (Yup - covers the AM radio band) to reduce intermod fro out of band stuff.  Conversion to 137 or 185khz would be awkward, but theoreticaly should be possible, likewise conversion to ham 160m, or down to 60khz or 100khz for other fun stuff.  They have a balanced loop input as well as an unbalanced sense antenna - lots of  potential!

73 - Tom in St. Louis