[Milsurplus] Pre-WWII Aircraft Radio

[Ray Fantini]

Both TBW and GO series transmitters use an 837 as a master oscillator and a second stage 837 intermediate amplifier driving an 803 PA tube. Having some experience using a TBW on 40 meters and attempting to get it to work on 20 meters would assume that an early GO would be almost useless above eighteen to twenty MHz don't care what the book or specs were knowing what happens when the huge keying relay starts shaking the transmitter and the instability the movement causes on lower bands and the poor efficiency at 14 MHz think the transmitter would be almost useless at higher frequencies also all GO series transmitters were CW only. Who would pair a command type receiver with a CW only transmitter?  Perhaps the early high frequency ideas were what engineering thought the radio was capable of but in reality when everyone found out how poorly the radio worked at those frequencies they revised the specs. Would not be the first time the government accepted a system that did not meet the required specification. The CQ Surplus conversion manual shows how to use your TBW or GO on ten and fifteen meters. Their instructions are to gut all the tuned circuits in the LF cabinet and build new tuned circuits for those bands and that comes with a way reduced output power.