[Milsurplus] BC-230, ham hack art'l

[Hue Miller]

>Marty, doesn't he get multiplier points if he does this? -Hue

We're poring over the rules right now and...

u know the BC-230 is le cubisme...

I certainly have all along regarded the -230 as way up there in cubism. When 
i first saw
one, in a surplus catalog, decades back as a youngster, i was amazed and 
apalled at the
same time. It certainly didn't look like any radio i had ever seen. There 
was NO styling
whatsoever. It looked about as stylish as a meat grinder, plow, or some 
other industrial
machine - which  of course, it really was.

I saw that article too. The schematics were simple enuff even a simple 
minded beginner
could understand them. ( The simplicity kinda reminds me of a cartoon i saw 
in EI many
years back - some explorer is crawling in a early-man cave, he shines his 
flashlight on the
wall and there among the animal carvings is a schematic of a crystal radio. 
) That's still
the feeling i get when i look at a BC-230 or BC-191 schematic nowadays - 
it's like
looking at a child's book again, like rereading from the "Real Book About 
Submarines"
again, and i know the stories by heart now.
What if you took a trip in the wayback machine, back to Army Radio School 
around
1941? You'd get a chance to try out all these old rigs, which would be fun, 
"How do
you read me now?", but back in the classroom, when the instructor's pointer 
pointed
to triode #2 and he droned on about it, you'd be nodding off or doodling in 
your
notebook....under penalty of being assigned KP...

I'd never now of course hack a BC-230, but i do kinda wish i could find a 
hacked one,
even one converted to 10m. I think it would be a lot of fun to run one, with 
a
command set, or car radio + converter, on 10m AM. Or maybe even 11m AM, good
buddy.

Some years back, i bought a pile of stuff that must have been stripped out 
of some
T-xx (unknown number) Army trainer. I got a BC-229/ 230, the control boxes, 
the
connectors, and all the cables. The radios and boxes i sent to a command 
sets
collector in Montana, but i selfishly kept the connectors, thinking they 
might come
in useful, like maybe some of them might fit the RUGF. I don't know if that 
is true,
that project went way down the list when i had to start moving around the 
country.
I also got a throttle control stick and a foot pedal of some kind that says 
"VULTEE"
on it - maybe that's a clue to the kind of trainer. Got to dig those out and 
convert
those to cash.

Used to find some pretty neat stuff in surplus venues back when. I once 
found
an ART-13 and its ARB and misc stuff that looked like it had come right out 
of
the same plane - foolishly, i bought only the ARB. Who knew that ART-13s
would (again!) be desirable? - Hue Miller