[AMRadio] Need some help here

[Dan Hall]

Greetings Gang:
I have just about gotten my BC1-J up on 3870.  I'm using crystal control and
have wound a plug in coil for the oscillator. It's on frequency and dips
well. The Gates manual says it should make about 2-4 MA of grid drive for
the 6146 exciter pair. It does. I have re-tapped the exciter coil and get a
dip when it is tuned, though no where near as sharp as I would like to see.
The manual says it should provide about 140 MA of grid drive to the 833A PA
tubes. It does not. I'm getting about 25 MA. I have shorted the low grid
relay so that I can put plate voltage to the finals and it will tune, with
2000 VDC on the plates to about 5-600 Watts. The problem is that the
frequency is all over the place depending on the variable coil setting. By
that I mean , when moving toward the dip the frequency will rise from
3869.667 (funky crystal, thanks Jan) to around 4050 KC. The frequency shift
is not in jumps either but seems relatively smooth. There is no decent dip
at all until the PA begins to act like a doubler, then she dips good.  When
tuned and loaded through much trial and error to about 350 Watts, and on
frequency, the frequency is not stable and can jump to 3900+/- or higher
when switching between transmit and standby (exciter and PA plates turned
off). On top of all that, the modulator isn't modulating. I get the 80 MA
idle current and the current jumps around when speaking into the mic, but
nothing out on the peak meter.

????
Dan
KJ7FX