[ARC5] OT The BC-659- what were they thinking?

[J Mcvey]

I'm fixing one of these monsters for a guy who had to have that particular radio for his WWII Jeep.
After learning about it , I was amazed that the Army thought this thing was a good idea.1) It does not communicate with a lot of other period radios (27-38MHZ FM)2) They tout 300 channels but you can only install and tune two at a time.3) changing the frequncy selections involves changing the (two)crystals and  re-tuning a bunch of caps for tx/rx.4) For what it does, its HUGE!5) max power 1.3 watts.
The guy who bought it saw that some of the  the crystals were in the 40 meter range and thought that was the range. This thing uses the 4th harmonic of the installed crystal then adds the the 4.3 MHZ IF  for the RX.
The transmitter is NOT crystal controlled, but LC.
The best I can figure to do, is to put it on 29,600 caling freq and a talk frequency at 29.500 which are two of the channel choices. 29.500 is not a good idea either since that the top of the sattelite  region, but those are the choices unless I get a custom xtal to land it on 29.550.
A bad osc plate cap tosted the grid of the mixer tube ( of coarse!!) , but I think the rx might work once I get a new one.
Next up is the TX section, which i have to figure out what kind of dummy load it needs.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/arc5/attachments/20160601/f6bbd629/attachment-0001.html>