Batboard

Hi all,

I have a trackstar railroad radio (ex CN radio) that is haveing rcvr prob's.

i have no idea who trackstar is but i have heard GE made them or took the company over?

the rcve audio is garbled but the radio does xmit well.

i am looking for a manual copy or schematic's - pdf or jpeg would be cool - but paper is ok.

the radio has the standard fra power (72 and 12vdc) accy and mic plugs - which i do have the connectors for and am useing the handset mic (yes it does have a working fromt panel mic with the ptt button on front as well).

radio appears to be prom controlled but does have a internal connector for test or diag i am guessing.

the radio does have fra ch's 7 - 97 and follows the fra seperate rcve/xmit with home mode ch lay out.

fcc id :AJT9UGH5RTDV - harmon industries.
trackstar III radio model H5RTDV


oops forgot to mention that it does have a DTMF key pad on it
which works and is switch selectable DTMF/TONE.


thankx for any info,

Bill

The Trackstar was made by Harmon Industries that is now part of GE Harris Railway Electronics which is a GE-Harris joint venture.

I have worked on the radios and have a couple of them. I unfortunately no longer have access to a manual or schematic.

RX audio problems are very common along with blown audio output transistors. The audio bias adjustment is very critical. I can't quote the exact adjustment procedure from the manual but basically you need to carefully adjust bias for minimum current and distortion. If the RX current draw starts to increase sharply, back off quick or you blow the audio transistors. The RX front end tuning also tends to drift out over time and needs to be touched up.

The radio is preprogrammed for the standard FRA channels. Home channels and other custom programming is done by a small handheld programmer that connects to the "test" connector you mentioned.

I have been attempting wthout success to locate a manual and build my own programmer. I used to maintain these for a small RR and they sent me their manual and programmer along with the radio each time. They had a change in personnel and the new people don't know where the manual is and I no longer do their repairs.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

Wow,

all the questions i asked answered in 1 post, thankx

i did forget to ask about programming but you answered my question anyhoo.

it sounds like the programmer has it's software in rom - the electronics would not be too hard to build, but the rom and micro computer/controller might be.

also getting a rom image would not be easy.

the audio i am getting is distorted, i'll check the alignment and keep the over current problem in mind.

the radio was dead when i powered it up - no tx/rx but the display did change when i changed the ch's, so i did the fameous micor/ibm mainframe trick - reseat and replug all boards and connectors.

got tx and rx but rx only has bad audio.

other then the rx problem - the only other thing bad is the alpha/numaric displays with bad segments.

it shouldnt be too hard to replace them or cross reference the part (i hope).

thankx again for the info,

Bill


[quote="k2hz"]The Trackstar was made by Harmon Industries that is now part of GE Harris Railway Electronics which is a GE-Harris joint venture.

I sent more details on audio adjustment and programming in a private message before I saw this reply.

I think the programmer is a simple BCD encoder device, no software involved.

Re the display segments, try some more reseating of plugs and parts before concluding the display is bad.

The PTT button and the up/down selector buttons do tend to go bad and often need replacment.