[ARC5] BC-AS-230 Transmitter, part 1 - tube adapters, general clean-up, quest for a dummy load

[Ben Hall]

Good morning all,

Before I get into the meat of my post...I should note that I have 
received everything I need to assemble and ship 4-pin to 7/9-pin 
miniature tube adapter kits.  I am putting the final touches on an 
informational webpage which will go live for orders later this week.  :)

With the BC-AN-229 all but finished and working, I took a break from the 
webpage work above and opened up the BC-AS-230 transmitter.  I'll 
admit...partly because I want to take some pictures of the tube adapters 
in their intended environment...but also because I think it will be next 
in the repair/restoration queue.

I was happy to find that the BC-AS-230 was totally unmodified, albeit a 
bit dirty.  Clean-up consisted of brushing out some lose dirt and a few 
q-tips moistened with alcohol for the really yucky parts.

Interestingly...it appears that all of the can caps in this unit are 
*good* (resistance >5 megohms when not bypassed with a resistor) which 
is way different from the BC-AN-229 receiver where every single one was 
*bad* (<40k ohms).

This set may not need much of any work at all to get it back on the air.  :)

Which brings up a question - when I test it, I want to terminate it into 
a dummy load.  I know a 50 ohm unit is not appropriate...and the SCR-183 
manual mentions an A-55 dummy antenna but I can't find any data on what 
the internals of an A-55 dummy antenna may be.

I'm thinking that because the ARC-5 sets, the follow-on past the BC-230 
series, were designed for a 5 to 15 ohm load I can't really go too far 
wrong with an 8 ohm, 10 watt resistor.  Thoughts?

thanks much and 73,
ben, kd5byb