[Milsurplus] ARC 38 choppers

[boeing377 at aol.com]

I have found that most chopper/vibrator failures are not coil failures?but cruddy contacts. It is ugly, but you can cut them open and clean up the contacts and they usually return to full function. Many vacuum tube marine band AM radios made in the 50s and early 60s used Mallory Vibrapacks, a 12-300VDC converter using a vibrator. My dad, a commercial fisherman, had to buy new vibrators often. Once I learned how to cut them open and overhaul them, we never bought another. We had a ready overhauled spare and just swapped when needed. I just used electrical tape to seal them up. Ugly, but functional.



On the ARC 38 it should be pretty easy to design an?transistor multivibrator ckt to substitute for the chopper. Might even be able to fit it in the same can.



73,

Mark

AF6IM