[ARC5] Did Rube Goldberg own this?

[John McCarty]

The green boxes on the left are rechargeable batteries from a BC-1335 FM 
set.

I wonder if someone kludged this up for comms in a light plane that 
didn't have an electrical system.

73

John n9hrt


On 2/12/2014 10:24 AM, Robert Nickels wrote:
> 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
>
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