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IC-R71E Receiver
My IC-R71E was a gift from my good friend Robert
Davies, M1FFY who gave
it to me in 2021. Robert no longer had a use for the
receiver which,
following re-alignment, is providing excellent service at G4ALG
as the main
station receiver.
As many people have found, the voltage controlled
oscillators (VCOs) in the R71E become
unreliable, with the VCOs going out of lock. This was the
case with
the receiver as received from Robert. The cause is almost
always due to
the plastic trimmer capacitor in the VCO where their internal
contacts go
high resistance. Repairers often replace the plastic
trimmers with
ceramic trimmers, and this resolves the problem. But I
found that
simply turning the trimmers back and forth many times also
resolved the
problem. By this means, I was able to get the trimmers into
a stable
state such that I could proceed to re-align the receiver without
further
issues.
I have modified the receiver by fitting a sidetone
oscillator which can
be keyed from an external source. The oscillator is based
on an
analogue phase shift oscillator and the output signal is
connected to the
internal audio amplifier.
I have also added an Icom FL-32A (CW Narrow Filter, 500Hz) and
replaced the original Icom ROM module in the R71E with
the
module produced by Roberto,
IK2RND.

Here is the circuit of the sidetone oscillator
that I built into the
R71E:
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