[MRCA] last weekends AM Net

[Ray Fantini]

The last several years I have been preoccupied with ground radios, backpack and fixed point radios. Lot of time spent on the GRC-106, KWM-2A, R-390 and lots of other heavy radios that I have been operating, repairing and selling. But back ten years ago or so much time was spent on late forties and early fifties aircraft equipment.
One project that I spent about three or four years on was setting up a working ARC-38 AM transceiver. Took some time and started with a crystal control 618S but eventually found a non-modified ARC-38 and sorted out all the mechanical and electronic issues between the radio with its incredibly complex frequency generation system, power requirements and all the issues of the radio and antenna tuner working together as a system.
The rack that it's in is still set up in a corner of the shop but don't think I have used that radio in at least a couple years.
I needed something on 7.296 AM and all the other radios I have in the shop now are too new and do "fake" USB + carrier and not real plate modulated AM and although I should have tested it before it came down to be one hour before the net and I cleaned the cob webs off the set and gave it a try.
To my amazement the set came to life with no issues, was able to enter the frequency on the control head and after the radio channeled was on frequency and connecting it to a dummy load hit the microphone key and the transmitter and antenna tuner found a solution and loaded up to 100 watts with no issues.
Hard to believe that after sitting for over a year or two with no use that sixty five year old radio was able to spring back to life without having to have something done.
I think of radios like the T-195 that every time you try to get it to auto tune it's basically a crap shoot but the old Collins did a good job.
All this has me wondering, who had the oldest radio? And most important question what radio was the heaviest? Net controls T-368 sounds like a contender, My Arc-38 with tuner, power supply and rack is maybe in the top five but W1NZR SRT-14 may have the title. Don't know what TMC stuff W9WT was running and that's always something big, or if anyone else has anything to add but I think the T-368 and SRT-14 were the two heaviest transmitters.
Attached is a picture of my ARC-38 setup.

Ray F/KA3EKH

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/mrca/attachments/20181105/836e3fe7/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 38hro.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 105671 bytes
Desc: 38hro.jpg
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/mrca/attachments/20181105/836e3fe7/attachment-0001.jpg>