[ARC5] History of Ham Mods: Opinions?

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

Jim & Group,

Removing the solder from the rear 7-pin female connector isn't that easy but 
can be done although it usually requires a finish cleanup with a blunted drill 
bit.  The far worse thing people did was to solder to the banana pins that 
the dynamotors plug onto.  Successful solder removal is almost impossible.

I've seen receiver racks (hard to find) and modulators with wires soldered to 
the 2-pin or 3-pin DC input connectors because the PL-147 and 148 is harder 
to find than the racks and modulators.  The female contacts in the large banana 
pin connectors of the sort used on the BC-375 and many other early aircraft 
and a few early ground sets are a proper fit, albeit a pain to remove from the 
bakelite.  And some of the large banana pin connectors themselves are harder 
to find than PL-147's so you have to be careful what you destroy for the 
contacts.

I posted this once before.  The 7-pin male in the box on the front of a 
derelict receiver (if the pins aren't already ruined by solder) is a proper fit to 
the female connector on the rear of all the receivers and all except the 
AN/ARC-5 transmitters.  The 6-pin male connectors that the IF and RF coils in the 
receivers plug onto also fit except no center pin.  One group of three fits the 
AN/ARC-5 transmitters and the other group fits everything else (I never can 
recall which is which).  If you carefully center drill the insulating disk and 
install one of the rivet style mini-banana pins, you have working plugs for 
all models.  But note that late WECo SCR-274-N production saved pennies by 
omitting unused pins from some of the plugs.  So those receivers do not yield seven 
usable plugs.

In a message dated 12/30/2008 1:01:44 AM Central Standard Time, 
hro5-2 at cox.net writes: 
> There is one topic that should be added - how do you connect the 
> power connector?  Racks are difficult and expensive to find.  Someone 
> told me to just solder to the connector.  The solder could be removed 
> should a rack be found. I like Brad Hernlin's mini-banana plug pins, 
> but you would need to check with him to see if they will be available 
> on a long-term basis.
> 

Robert & Susan Downs - Houston
wa5cab dot com (Web Store)
MVPA 9480
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