ADVANCE E2 SIGNAL GENERATOR

[raylec]

I have recently aquired  an Advane e2 sig gen. However I have found that the calibration is slightly out on all bands, its reading a little low at both ends of each band. moving the cursor or dial is not an option, voltages check ok, any ideas from anyone? since I dont want to start adjusting the trimmers

[Diabolical Artificer]

I have a H1 and adjusted it from memory by twiddling a variable inductor, it was straightfoward. Try popping it on a frequency counter and giving the trimmer/s a gentle turn, as long as you mark it's present position you should be fine.

Andy.

[raylec]

This gen uses air cored coils, so no adjustment there! There are cap trimmers using wire wrapping around some tubing, there is also a trimmer across the tuning gang, since this is common to all bands I may try adjusting that. I have a frequency meter so I can get the results very close to MFR spec of 1%.
What puzzles me is that there is only one adjustment on each band, and since capacity adjustment is usual done at the hf end of band, I am wondering how the lf end can adjusted to get good dial tracking

[Diabolical Artificer]

"What puzzles me is that there is only one adjustment on each band" These sig gen's were pretty cheap and cheerful, not like a Marconi with lots of adjustability on each band, could you not retrofit a few varicaps or similar onto the range SW? RF not really my bag so could be talking out of my pipe.

Andy.

[ppppenguin]

As Andy says, these are relatively cheap and cheerful generators, not precision instruments. I really don't think it's worth trying to use modern trickery to achieve better accuracy. The stability of the generator with time and temperature would probably make such an exercise worthless.

Tracking, in the sense of aligning a superhet receiver, is trying to align the local oscillator not only with the dial markings but also with the RF tuning. A slightly more complicated problem than aligning a signal generator.

You sy the coils are air cored. Are they on formers or in air? if the latter the turns can be squeezed up or opened to adjust the inductance.

In the absence of formal alignment instructions I would start at the lowest range and get that as correct as possible with the main trimmer across the tuning gang. You may need to go up and down the band a few times to spread the errors. Then work up the ranges using the individual trimmers. Again you may be repeating this more than once to spread the errors evenly across all bands. But it might be better starting a the highest end and working down.

if you want a really accurate signal generator then you need to buy something rather better than an E2. If you're just alignng radios and TVs then the E2 is good enough. Even with an E2 or other simple SG then you can always use a counter to set accurate frequencies, something that wasn't available when these SGs were new.

[kevin.Hoyland]

Hello.
I have 2 Advance E2s the first one I have had for over 20 years or so .
I have to say they have always been spot on , Have you let it warm up 15 mins or so. Have you replaced the Capacitors and  tested the resistors to see if they are ok. I have Marconi and Philips Taylor AM/FM signal Generators.  But for general radio work I use the E2. Chas Miller always said the best Signal Generator he had was is E2.

Kevin