[Milsurplus] FA BC-325

[Jim Haynes]

When I arrived at the University of Arkansas as a freshman in the fall
of 1955 the transmitter at the ham station W5YM was a BC-325.  I was
mighty impressed, especially when watching one of the seniors tune it
up with each hand on a knob, peaking one thing and dipping another.

There was an old Army truck, and I was told that the BC-325 had been
installed in that truck when it arrived.  The truck was a bit bigger
than the one for the SCR-299.  There was a hole in the floor, and I
was told that there was originally a generator on the floor that
connected to something in the truck drive train through that hole.
That would suggest that it was usable without the generator pulled
by a trailer that the SCR-299 used.  I guess the installation used
the BC-312 and BC-342 receivers like the SCR-299.

I was surprised that the serial number on the FA unit is 78 - I was
under the impression that only a handful of BC-325s were built.

I don't think W5YM ever used the transmitter above 40M for a long time.
We were in an extreme fringe area for TV at the time, so TVI was a
difficult problem.  There was a cable TV system in town, but it simply
had antennas on a mountain top trying to receive signals from places
like Tulsa.  So any harmonics generated by a ham were pretty sure to
get into the cable TV system.

I modified the BC-325 for FSK so we could run RTTY.  Later went into the
PA stage and took out about 18 inches of excess lead length from the
RF circuits, and then we were able to operate on 20M.

Jim W6JVE