[ARC5] BC-348 tuning rate and article

[Bob Groh]

Interesting thoughts.  Way back in the ancient days (well, really not that
far back) when, by buying surplus gear,  we could get darned decent
receivers for not a lot of money (which in those days many of us (who were
quite young'ish (i.e. teens and thereabouts)) did not have a great
abundance of) and we would do all kinds of funny stuff to those poor old
relics to 'improve' them - mangle them to bandspread them, mangle the power
supplies to fit our needs, etc, etc. Now we much older and, perhaps, a bit
wiser folks, think " why the h*** did we do that silly thing..".  And yes,
we are wiser. When we find them in more or less virgin state, let's leave
them in as close to virgin state as we can.

73
Bob Groh, WA2CKY


On Sat, May 9, 2020 at 7:03 PM Hubert Miller <Kargo_cult at msn.com> wrote:

> I was looking at the 73 Magazine, June 1963 Special Surplus Catalog Issue,
> page 18, "Bandspreading the BC-348."
> Describes adding series capacity limiting caps to the 4 gang sections and
> then parallel caps also to place the bands
> approximately at the same place. Says 80, 20 meter bands are now spread
> over 4x times as much dial travel and
> 40 meters now spread 3x as large. I never thought of the BC-348 as an SSB
> machine and actually, I thought for CW
> use the bandspread, tuning rate was adequate and certainly better than
> many other era receivers we have used.
> Article says these changes can be undone, if wished, in under 15 minutes.
> BUT - you are now dealing with a next
> to useless dial readout, unless you make a new dial scale. Myself I would
> not execute this mod unless on an
> already plentifully hacked example and anyway, I'm not sure it's even
> worth it. I wonder what you the readers
> think about the BC-348 tuning rate and dial as - is. I tend to think it's
> already adequate and perfectly usable.
>
> There was another article a few years later which did the same procedure
> and so enabled 15 meters hamband
> coverage without modifying any coils.
>
> I have a large German receiver, an AE4139 Siemens, which had general
> coverage and one dial only, and someone
> post war retrimmed it to 80, 40, 20, 15 and made a whole new dial scale
> for it. I will leave that one as - is.
> -Hue Miller
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