[ARC5] First Post and Questions

[Bobby Drummond]

Hello to all.  Name here is Bobby Drummond and the call is AK4JA.  I've
been licensed as a Amateur Radio operator for 35 years and just heard about
and signed up for this list.

My passion is homebrewing (radios that is) and CW.  I'm not averse to
restoring old gear as well and hence we arrive at the real reason I am now
a member of this mailing list:  I bought a BC-457 A transmitter at the
Dayton Hamvention this year.

Have you seen the recent commercial where two women are talking about a
sofa just acquired and the owner says, "I had to have it!"  (then two
burglars are looking at the same sofa later while burglarizing the same
house and one of the two says the same thing:  "I had to have it."  Guess
what I thought when I saw the BC-457 A on a table in the Hamvention Flea
Market area in Xenia?   Yep, the exact same thing.

The plan:   restore the BC-457 A using every trick in the book to make it
work reliably and be as stable as possible.  The reason being that I want
to put it on 60 meters (CW, of course - see first sentence in second
paragraph above)   The BC-457 A "tops out" from the factory at 5.3 MHz
according to what I have read and I want to put in on frequencies from
5.332 to 5.405 MHz.  I'm thinking that some minor adjustments to the
oscillator tuning should do the trick.  Adjustments that would be easy to
"undo" if I want to put the radio back in "just like it left the factory"
condition. I would also like to put it on the air regularly in a net if
that is possible, too.

Any suggestions, hints, caveats, or advice related to doing said tasks
would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some questions that come to mind:

   1) Has anyone on the list already done what I am thinking about? (I'm
especially referring to putting a "Command Set" on 60 meters)

   2) Is there a net for ARC5 or equivalent radios that I can listen to
now?  If so, how can I get details about the net?

   3) what is the best cleaner to remove oxidation from the roller inductor?


My plans are to power the BC-457 A with a power supply that I will build,
using the best voltage regulators available and with a large enough
transformer to be rated at least double the power requirements of the
BC-457 A. I will power the filaments with a tightly regulated 24 Volt DC
supply and plan on using conventional keying (keying relay built in the
BC-457 A)

So, that's it for my first post.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.
With the long and storied history of these rigs, built and operated by our
Greatest Generation, I think it would be an honor and privilege  to restore
one and put it to good use on the 60 meter ham band, a band that I really
like a lot.


73 de AK4JA
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