Smoke got out

Nice to hear that - LITTON was the BEST in the industry - didn't require RF measurement.

We bought ours in 80 or 81 - big sucker - but it takes big stuff! I think the shop will get it someday just to get a new one in the house. Hum - sandwich machine, little ice box, little drink box, microwave - days work could be done!

Martin :-)

They put one in Dallas - that is just down I35 from you !

Maybe someday because it is north on I35!

Martin [ going to mis it. - hum wonder if it has a www page. Never looked! ]

I'm not a Nuke Engineer ;-) but that isn't 'one large diode', it's made up inside of a whole stack of diodes in series in a common case - only way you can cheaply rectify seriously high voltages.

If it's dead, don't go spending a whole lot of money on new spare parts, though finding a similar model to be a parts donor might be helpful - swap in a known good used part to make sure you've isolated the problem and it's repairable before you spend on new pieces.

And my brother had one of those original 70's "Amana RadarRange" units that simply wouldn't die, it took a house fire to kill it externally.

-->--

FWIW, I have two of these "radar range" ovens, one in the kitchen that I still use, bought new in 1972 with my first ever paycheck. I prefer it to the newer ones for a couple of reasons - first, the stainless steel interior and heavy door make it unlikely to bleed microwaves (door seal is a microwave choke, not metal to metal seal), but even more importantly, I like the analog timers - you just twist the knob and press start, no punching in of numbers for how many seconds you want - it's much more convenient - something was lost with the "improvement" to digital keypads in this case.

The second one came from the trash, works fine and is a spare for the first. great machines.

Possibly for short-term use only. Apparently many microwave transformers don't really have enough iron to avoid some core saturation when line voltage is applied to the primary, so the no-load current is rather high (for an unloaded transformer) and it tends to get hot.

It works in the oven because the transformer is only energized when cooking, and at those times there's a fan blowing lots of cool air over it. But you might expect an isolation transformer to be plugged into the wall indefinitely, and that might be a problem with a converted microwave transformer.

Dave

Hang on, I am on the West Coast, so I have first choice

Well, the eastern, eastern West Coast, assuming that we ignore Oz's eastern islands.

You can have the far, far West Coast Distributorship. I take a commission of course. Alan in beautiful Golden Bay, Western Oz, South 32.25.42, East 115.45.44 GMT+8 VK6 YAB ICQ 6581610 to reply, change oz to au in address

I have a Kenmore bought in 82 with the same story. Looks like them made em well back then.

Interestingly, the replacement (GE) unit, a whopping $59, including a set of five small glass bowls with plastic covers, seems to be much more functional. The old unit made no claims of wattage, so I have to assume the new one is simply more powerful. The new one may or may not hold up as well, but it sure as hell works better, at least according to the boss.

Harold

My Sharp microwave from '86 has a turntable, as did Panasonic models of the time. They're more common now.

David