[ARC5] adventures in battery ops

[Kenneth G. Gordon]

On 8 Apr 2015 at 13:37, J Mcvey via ARC5 wrote:

> It seems to me that changing to 6V tubes , "balancing filaments" ,using subs,
> etc, is a lot more expensive and time consuming than simply using the original
> tubes in parallel instead of series. Why do it this way? What am I missing?

There (or were) two reasons to sub 6.3 V tubes for the 12.6 V tubes: 1) if you 
do NOT want to, or don't feel competent to, rewire the filament string for 
parallel operation when you want to use the radios in a system with only 12.6 
V available, and 2) in those days when cars had only 6 V systems, so you 
could use the radios in that use. But for 2) you had to do both.

There is, of course, another way to deal with the 12 V- only issue: there are 
on eBay and other places "up-converters" which accept a 12 V input and 
output 24 V.

To my way of thinking, if/when I want to use our favorite radios in a 12 V 
system, modifying the filament string for parallel operation is the least 
intrusive and very easily reversed simple way to deal with the problem.

Ken W7EKB