[ARC5] Did Rube Goldberg own this?

[Robert Nickels]

On 2/12/2014 9:41 AM, Ian Wilson wrote:
> Remarkably ugly at first sight, but an interesting assemblage.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I love these rube-ish kludges you 
guys keep posting!    If nothing else, it's a reminder how how clever 
hams were back then, and what lengths they'd go to just to get on the 
air.   Now, I hear guys on their riceboxes all the time complaining 
about one thing or another while sitting in front of a box our 
forerunners in the hobby would have considered to be run by magic.  To 
me they're as much a part of ham history and not just something to 
ridicule - I reckon the OM who put this assemblage together would defend 
it by saying "Hey!  It works!"

As Ian said, the Harvey Wells AT-3B light aircraft transmitter is an 
interesting beast all by itself - found a couple of pics here:
http://www.swedeart.com/harvey/html/1948.html

According to an old product summary from the late 40s, it came with a 
crystal for 3105 kc and sold for $74.95.  I'd guess there's a pair of 
7C5 loktals in push-pull modulating another one as the PA for 5-6 watts 
output, very similar to the RCA, Heath, and other transmitters.   This 
was in the era when pilots transmitted on HF and listened for a reply 
from the tower on the LF beacon frequency, so the Harvey Wells was sold 
to those who already had a suitable receiver which was used for homing 
in on beacons and obtaining weather information.    Imagine every 
aircraft in the sky sharing one frequency!

We all know why the ARC-5 components were repurposed into VFOs and such 
- they were cheap, plentiful, and exceptionally high quality. I've just 
been working on a Gonset GSB-100 that used the Command Set VFO 
components and not surprisingly the VFO was dead-on frequency < 1khz 
error, end-to-end, without any tweaking.   They couldn't be beat then, 
and still can't be!

73, Bob W9RAN