[ARC5] Yes; I can say...

[George Babits]

There is no "crime" in doing whatever you want to whatever you owned 70 
years ago.  And, as far as I know, it would not be a "crime" to pull the 
elephant trunk off a BC-312 or put an S-Meter onto a BC-348 that you owned 
today.    It may not be as "acceptable" as it was back then, but it is far 
from a criminal act.

73,
George
W7HDL


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Stinson" <arc5 at ix.netcom.com>
To: <arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 9:36 PM
Subject: [ARC5] Yes; I can say...


>> Where is the crime here?
>
> The "crime" was that, due to lack understanding
> or even the desire to understand the design and
> proper operation of these radios, 90%+ of these
> "improvements" were never completed and if they
> were, the sets operated poorly and were discarded
> at the first chance to get a "commercial" rig.  That
> "handbook" modification of so-called "ARC-5"
> transmitters was an awful mod- a kludge and was responsible for the 
> destruciton thousands of them, including by *me* when I was young.  If 
> that "modification" was so good, why were QSOs with them so rare?
> Oh, there were the CE rigs.  I'll give you that
> one exception.  But the stand-alone transmitters?
>
> I've been a ham for 45 years.  I think I can count
> the number of  stand-alone "ARC-5" transmitters
> I've QSOed on the fingers of one hand.  Commercial rigs of that era can 
> still be heard
> and worked by the dozens today.  If the common
> ham-mods that were done to thousands
> of the transmitters were so "good" and
> "got people on the air cheap,"  where are they?
> They ain't here, because they never were here.
> It's a myth.  They were abused, then junked.
>
> Show me the thousands of QSL cards from the 1950s and 1960s that say 
> "ARC-5" transmitter.
> Oh, you can find a few scattered here and there,
> but given the thousands of the rigs chain-sawed
> into "ham transmitters," half your QSLs from 1963 should say "ARC-5." 
> Well, they don't.
> They don't because the rigs were abused, operated without understanding 
> and thus
> performed poorly and were discarded at the first opportunity.  That 
> yellow-bound blasphamy
> "CQ Command Sets" is single-handedly responsible for the destruction of 
> countless AN/ARC-5 transmitters when it published
> a 274N diagram and claimed it applied to
> all the transmitters- one sin among many
> in that cursed tome.
>
> There's plenty of "crime" here.  Most sets
> were hammered, drilled and sawn, then thrown on the junk-heap when they 
> didn't immediately act like a Globe Scout or DX-40.
> I was guilty, too.  I was young.  But I was also mis-lead.
>
> If a technical journal of any profession
> publish as much destructive "Whooo-Weeee"
> about any subject as was printed in CQ,
> 73 and QST about the Command Sets,
> they'd be tarred and feathered and rightly so.
> Gordon White was about the only rational
> voice at the time and he was "crying in the wilderness."
> So yeah... when I see something butchered and junked like the poor zombie 
> on Ebay,
> I'm gonna wrinkle my nose.
>
> OK... Rant off.  IMHO, YMMV of course.
>
> 73 Dave AB5S
>
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