[Milsurplus] most Dangerous Transmitters

[Ray Fantini]

My vote would be the T-368 transmitter. The first thing most Hams do is bypass all the interlocks. The stupid thing about that is in order for the HV distribution to work the drawers have to be all the way that sets the interlocks. Have had people tell me the interlocks become internment, so why not just fix them.
I cannot think of any reason why you need to operate it outside the case, for it to work removed from the case you would also have to build up HV jumpers. The overload adjustments are all located on the front of the power supply, any diagnostics of the power supply can be done at low level or by isolation along with pushing the drawers back in but imagine most people don't want to do the additional work sliding the drawers in and out when trying to diagnose an overload issue.
Second thing would be the Hot PA tank, the plate current meter and the band selector switch for the output tank are all at HV potential. Later series have an isolated PA current meter but the first generation had only a small amount of isolation and doing things while the transmitter is on like washing off the front of the transmitter including the plate meter with a wet rag have interesting results. The tube that is used as a shunt across the screen of the PA tube as part of the keying system can be fun also and although I am not certain of this would suspect that when the transmitter is in HV on standby and the shunt is full on it may produce X-Rays. Fortunately there are tons of shielding when the drawer is in place.
And last but not least my favorite thing about the 368, unless the transmitter is secured to a wall or the floor it needs to be on a special dolly that has outriggers attached. Most Hams remove this first thing because they keep stubbing their toes on the outriggers. What's worse and I have seen this twice is that they will install wheels or casters under the four corners of the transmitter and when you do this if you pull out the top drawer to far or fast the transmitter will tip over and do its best to kill you!
The manual states that never attempt to pull out more than one drawer at a time. If it starts to fall forward you will not be able to catch it.
The T-368 is a great transmitter when used by the book, unfortunately most out there have been Ham Hacked in a great number of ways. There are volumes written about how to hack up the modulator. Maybe the only thing that's been Ham Hacked more would be the ARC-5 radios and the BC-348
Well that's my rant, what's yours?
Ray F/KA3EKH
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