[MRCA] BC-652 Receiver

[Ray Fantini]

Often, we take up projects that we had no intention of doing, just somehow, they take on a life of their own. During Hamvention while viewing a small part of the W4VAG estate saw this BC-652 receiver. It was hacked with a poorly installed AC power supply, was filthy dirty and missing its case. It almost appeared as it was only fit for the scrap pile.
I am always thinking about what new or different radio can be used for the 3885 AM Net at Hamvention and that along with the fact that I have never owned a 652 was all it took. Brought the radio back home and started by removing the AC power supply that would have been a disaster if somehow it were activated, the speaker and S meter circuit that was hacked into the set, spent couple hours cleaning all the layers of dust, dirt and mud from the chassis and started to replace a lot of the wiring to its original state. After getting that all straight and getting the filaments all up and running turned to B+ testing. Wow, before it was all over found that every "Black" chicklet capacitor in the screen, plate and cathode circuits were serious leaky or shorted. Couple of the oil filed capacitors were also major current drains too. So now all that's sorted and the receiver is working relatively well on eighty meters so the next step will be getting B+ from twelve volts DC.
Originally the radio had a fourteen-volt dynamotor on the calibrator - power deck above the radio but whoever hacked the radio originally removed all that and it's all long gone. Being I only intend to use this radio in the field have no interest in an AC supply and want to do something so it can be run from a storage battery next year at Hamvention.
One idea is to buy a NARCO T-12 power supply over on the bay and hack that up to provide the two hundred volts or so or but  thought I would try asking here if anyone had an old Motorola, GE or RCA Two Way hybrid radio that I can get the power transformer from so I can throw together a inverter to run this radio.
I know that there are tons of Chinese power blocks that can more than do this but just would not be right using something like that and am not afraid to build up a solid-state inverter to run the radio. It's just that when I built a inverter for the Canadian WS that I just did from scratch ran into issues getting a transformer that would work with square wave switching and figure this time if I start with a transformer designed for switching transistors or vibrators that would avoid a lot of trouble.
Attached are a couple pictures, one before I started and where the receiver is today. As is with most projects will do a video eventually.

Ray F/KA3EKH

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