Scoring and restoring old stuff: an AN/URM-25D

Another blast from the past, this is a pair of posts showing an AN/URM-25D I scored from a local swap meet for $5! It ruened out to be a real treasure as you aill see in the next post shoing the restoration.

At a swap meet some years ago, I scored an AN/URM-25D that looked like warmed-over dog poop outside but turned out to be very promising inside. I have another one of these that is now in the starting line-up when my Wave-Tek 3001 got a bad case of unlock-itis. So this one is warming up in the bull pen.

When I got it home and stuck it on the bench and checked it out just after the swap meet, it was dead on and rock stable. Aside from the cosmetics, the dial lights were burnt out and one of the bands was intermittent.

Here's the "before" pictures:

As figured when I forked over the five-spot to the seller, the outside looked tragic, but it did not look as though the inside had seen the light of day much and was relatively pristine.

I replaced the lights and related circuit with some bright LEDs but am less than happy with their brilliance - but they'll do. As for the intermittent band, I disassembled the unit and started poking and prodding but could not find anything amiss with the circuit. In the procees of doing that, however, I lifted the legs on a couple of components so they could be checked. When they were re-soldered, the band seemed to function correctly. So, I saw no reason to go further.

Here are the "during" pictures, The next post will be the results of sprucing it up..