[ARC5] command set adventures

[Bill Cromwell]

Hi,

I have been accumulating some of the "command receivers" for HF and MF
use here with the intent of putting them on the air in my ham station. I
envision a set of four in a row (600 through 40 meters) on some kind of
rack tray with power and other accessories/peripherals sprinkled around.
I plan to run the heater power supply separate from the plate supply
with all the tubes lit the whole time I'm using the station. The B+ will
be switched to choose the band I want to operate (and could be more than
one). That B+ line can also be used to incorporate the radios into the
overall T/R station controls.

I have been getting more serious about evaluating the requirements and I
have been running the 40 meter radio long hours. I notice that sometimes
when the furnace blower or the small beer/soda cooler kicks on the
frequency shifts just a bit initially and in a second or so comes back
about where it was. I have not noticed this problem on my R-23 but I am
going to look more closely. Just being at much lower frequencies may
make the shift less noticeable. I'll monitor that for some measurements
but it's not acceptable. My first thought was to add solid state voltage
regulation to each radio but that evolved to placing the hard regulation
in the power supply (just once) instead. I'm sure my silly ideas are not
brand new. Have any of the list members done similar things. I would
like pointers to avoid "gotchas" and practical information about
techniques for using those receivers that might work better than other,
more obvious approaches. 

I intend to add "external" filters and other processing to help the old
radios cope with *contest weekends*. More about that sort of fun in
another post.

73,

Bill  KU8H