Back from the W5E Special Event,
hosted by the Shreveport Amateur Radio Association and
the Eighth Air Force Museum at Barksdale Airforce Base
in North Louisiana.
What a great time! We ran the SCR-287 and SCR-274N
stations on Friday evening to "work the kinks out,"
and it's a good thing we did because there were
bugs to be found. The BC-375 didn't want to neutralize
properly. I didn't get that one fixed until
Saturday afternoon, even though we did log some
contacts on the 287 on Friday. By the "official" time
on Saturday, the rig was working and sounding good again.

The big scare on Friday night was the unmistakable smell
of roasted resistor coming from the BC-348-R,
which then crashed, stone dead.
I brought plenty of spares parts and started
"resuscitation" right away. This receiver had been running
flawlessly for a month (as had the transmitter), but now
*three* paper bypass caps failed, leaking to short.
This toasted two dropping resistors, failing them *low-Z*.
One 4.7 K-ohm was down to 200 ohms. The real scare was
that these were in the IF plate leads, right through
the hair-fine wire in the IF transformer windings.
The way the receiver suddenly died, I was sure one
of the IFs had gone open, but there must have been an
angel watching over us, because new caps and resistors
plus re-alignment brought it back from the dead.
We put the rig back together, warmed it up for a couple
of hours and it worked flawlessly on Saturday night
into the full-wave horizontal 80-meter loop at 40 feet.

*Gripe mode on*
Operation during the "official" time on 3880 KC
was, ummmm, "challenging." The AM ops from nearly
everywhere were courteous and helpful and we're most
grateful to them. Nevertheless, the QRM was vile-
absolutely horrible. The biggest problem was a group
down here in "5-Land" that, several years ago, decided
that they were the judges of what modes can and cannot
be used on 75 meters. They camp each night within 2 KCs of
3880 with the specific intent of causing as much grief
as possible for any operation in the AM window.
They make remarks about "ancient equipment,"
radios "so old that the knobs have frozen at 3880 KCs"
and about AM operators who are "too old and feeble
to reach up and spin their VFOs if they don't like it."
These room-temperature-IQ knuckle draggers
have been doing this for years. There is another SSB group
that does basically the same thing on 3898, but they're not
quite as nasty about it. I knew about them and that it
might be a problem, but 3880 was the best of bad choices
within the AM window down here on a Saturday night.
I was hoping that the bad actors would give it a rest
for one night for a veteran-connected special events station,
but no such luck. They performed their usual antics,
a couple of times even coming directly on frequency to
ask long and loud if "the frequency was in use."
Sheesh. To add insult to injury, at 9 PM, one hour before
we were going to officially end the AM try, two "big gun"
AM stations in the North East came down and plopped right on
top of us, ignoring dozens of guys telling them the freq
was in use. Their action effectively ended the AM event,
since nobody- even locals- could get past these guys.
I got the station back up after midnight and moved to the
then-clear 3890 KC and logged a few more before turning in.
The result of all this was that if you didn't have a really
good signal, you didn't get heard. I'm very sorry, guys-
I could hear dozens of stations calling, and I was able to
work some of the weaker ones through persistence,
but there was just no way to pull most of you more distant folks
out from under the few selfish clowns
who insisted on grinding their axes last night.
And once those two northeast AM guys dropped on us, it was over.
*Gripe mode off*

Nevertheless, we did make 97 contacts with the WWII gear,
including both coasts and Canada.
The guys with the modern rigs worked over 300, IIRC.
I've posted a picture of the WWII gear side of the
operation tent on alt.binaries.pictures.radio
and at:

And in case the previous gave you the wrong impression,
I had an absolute blast getting the old beasts running and
working all of you I could hear. The SCR-274N got in some phone
and CW contacts as well, but our 40-meter CW effort with the
274N was hampered by the Michigan QSO party. The rig was getting out
well into a vertical and worked several states.
We even had two SCR-274N-to-SCR-274N contacts,
as well as one with a fellow running a T-22/ARC-5.
Next time we'll try to pick a less busy weekend.

SARA did a wonderful job creating this event and
I'm very grateful for the chance to contribute.
Lots of good publicity, too.
More later- I need some shut-eye ;-).
73 DE Dave Stinson AB5S

David Stinson wrote:


The big scare on Friday night was the unmistakable smell
of roasted resistor coming from the BC-348-R,
which then crashed, stone dead.
I brought plenty of spares parts and started
"resuscitation" right away. This receiver had been running
flawlessly for a month (as had the transmitter), but now
*three* paper bypass caps failed, leaking to short.
This toasted two dropping resistors, failing them *low-Z*.
One 4.7 K-ohm was down to 200 ohms. The real scare was
that these were in the IF plate leads, right through
the hair-fine wire in the IF transformer windings.
The way the receiver suddenly died, I was sure one
of the IFs had gone open, but there must have been an
angel watching over us, because new caps and resistors
plus re-alignment brought it back from the dead.

On the antique radio forums we make a point of driving home "replace
those go***mn paper caps because they are never good". You've been
around, Dave, You should know better!
Since this post is only to the BA forum instead of cross-posting to
rar+p I can admit that the only old radio out of dozens that I have not
been compelled to wholesale recap has been an English Barker 88 which
used surplus (at the time) metal cased US war-surplus caps. They all,
100%, passed any test I could give them.
More often it makes sense to yank the old paper jobbies and place giant
Orange Globs (for the non-restuffers) ...or in your case, assume they
were ok with the resulting consequence.
FB on the expedition's results..

-Bill WX4A

Were you trying to run a net with a BC348 as your primary receiver??

The I.F. is as wide as a gorge! When the band is hot I could never use 348
without the 'Q5er.'



"Bill M" wrote in message
...
David Stinson wrote:


The big scare on Friday night was the unmistakable smell
of roasted resistor coming from the BC-348-R,
which then crashed, stone dead.
I brought plenty of spares parts and started
"resuscitation" right away. This receiver had been running
flawlessly for a month (as had the transmitter), but now
*three* paper bypass caps failed, leaking to short.
This toasted two dropping resistors, failing them *low-Z*.
One 4.7 K-ohm was down to 200 ohms. The real scare was
that these were in the IF plate leads, right through
the hair-fine wire in the IF transformer windings.
The way the receiver suddenly died, I was sure one
of the IFs had gone open, but there must have been an
angel watching over us, because new caps and resistors
plus re-alignment brought it back from the dead.

On the antique radio forums we make a point of driving home "replace those
go***mn paper caps because they are never good". You've been around,
Dave, You should know better!
Since this post is only to the BA forum instead of cross-posting to rar+p
I can admit that the only old radio out of dozens that I have not been
compelled to wholesale recap has been an English Barker 88 which used
surplus (at the time) metal cased US war-surplus caps. They all, 100%,
passed any test I could give them.
More often it makes sense to yank the old paper jobbies and place giant
Orange Globs (for the non-restuffers) ...or in your case, assume they were
ok with the resulting consequence.
FB on the expedition's results..

-Bill WX4A

Bill M wrote:

On the antique radio forums we make a point of driving home "replace
those go***mn paper caps because they are never good". You've been
around, Dave, You should know better!

I take your point, Bill, and I once agreed completely.
I've come around to a different attitude when it concerns
military radios with a historic angle. I now try to maintain
the original parts if I can satisfy myself that they are serviceable.
These guys were all tested and had been running without trouble for
some time. Of course, they are going to fail eventually.
I've just come to that point where "change as little as possible
and still bring it to life" has become my stand on these
rigs. I probably should have lowered the B+, as I've done
with other radios, which has helped preserve their original parts,
but I got cocky and overconfident on this one. It was
just pure luck and the grace of God that we didn't lose
an IF transformer. I could have replaced it, but it would
have meant working until dawn, instead of just until 1 AM ;-).

Thanks for the well-wishes. We're planning on doing another,
similar event in a year or so. The museum curator, Mr. Rigg,
was very enthusiastic about our efforts to preserve and
operate the equipment and says he's going to "draft" me to help
restore a B-24 they have. Yikes! ;-).
73 Dave S.

Albert & Btittany Spear wrote:

Were you trying to run a net with a BC348 as your primary receiver??

The I.F. is as wide as a gorge! When the band is hot I could never use 348
without the 'Q5er.'

I understand, but the whole point was to operate the special
event with as close to an actual, authentic 8th Airforce
WWII heavy bomber radio station as possible.
Otherwise, it would just be a contact with a typical 1950s ham rig.
So we announced on the net, on QRZ.COM, in QST
and on the DX reflectors, what we were doing and asked for help.
Most people did what they could to help-out and they were a godsend.
Even with QRM from the few bad apples,
I think we did pretty well.
73 Dave S.

"Albert & Btittany Spear" ) writes:
Were you trying to run a net with a BC348 as your primary receiver??

The I.F. is as wide as a gorge! When the band is hot I could never use 348
without the 'Q5er.'

BUt a wide receiver bandwidth means all the transmitters do not have
to be on exact frequency, something useful for net use.

And back when it was a current receiver, the BC348 would be extremely
useful for that. After all, transmitters were not frequency controlled
with the receivers.

Michael VE2BVW

Who were the Big Gun AM stations?

Mark K3MSB

"David Stinson" wrote in message
news:GqI8e.14705$Zn3.13207@trnddc02...
Back from the W5E Special Event,
hosted by the Shreveport Amateur Radio Association and
the Eighth Air Force Museum at Barksdale Airforce Base
in North Louisiana.
What a great time! We ran the SCR-287 and SCR-274N
stations on Friday evening to "work the kinks out,"
and it's a good thing we did because there were
bugs to be found. The BC-375 didn't want to neutralize
properly. I didn't get that one fixed until
Saturday afternoon, even though we did log some
contacts on the 287 on Friday. By the "official" time
on Saturday, the rig was working and sounding good again.

The big scare on Friday night was the unmistakable smell
of roasted resistor coming from the BC-348-R,
which then crashed, stone dead.
I brought plenty of spares parts and started
"resuscitation" right away. This receiver had been running
flawlessly for a month (as had the transmitter), but now
*three* paper bypass caps failed, leaking to short.
This toasted two dropping resistors, failing them *low-Z*.
One 4.7 K-ohm was down to 200 ohms. The real scare was
that these were in the IF plate leads, right through
the hair-fine wire in the IF transformer windings.
The way the receiver suddenly died, I was sure one
of the IFs had gone open, but there must have been an
angel watching over us, because new caps and resistors
plus re-alignment brought it back from the dead.
We put the rig back together, warmed it up for a couple
of hours and it worked flawlessly on Saturday night
into the full-wave horizontal 80-meter loop at 40 feet.

*Gripe mode on*
Operation during the "official" time on 3880 KC
was, ummmm, "challenging." The AM ops from nearly
everywhere were courteous and helpful and we're most
grateful to them. Nevertheless, the QRM was vile-
absolutely horrible. The biggest problem was a group
down here in "5-Land" that, several years ago, decided
that they were the judges of what modes can and cannot
be used on 75 meters. They camp each night within 2 KCs of
3880 with the specific intent of causing as much grief
as possible for any operation in the AM window.
They make remarks about "ancient equipment,"
radios "so old that the knobs have frozen at 3880 KCs"
and about AM operators who are "too old and feeble
to reach up and spin their VFOs if they don't like it."
These room-temperature-IQ knuckle draggers
have been doing this for years. There is another SSB group
that does basically the same thing on 3898, but they're not
quite as nasty about it. I knew about them and that it
might be a problem, but 3880 was the best of bad choices
within the AM window down here on a Saturday night.
I was hoping that the bad actors would give it a rest
for one night for a veteran-connected special events station,
but no such luck. They performed their usual antics,
a couple of times even coming directly on frequency to
ask long and loud if "the frequency was in use."
Sheesh. To add insult to injury, at 9 PM, one hour before
we were going to officially end the AM try, two "big gun"
AM stations in the North East came down and plopped right on
top of us, ignoring dozens of guys telling them the freq
was in use. Their action effectively ended the AM event,
since nobody- even locals- could get past these guys.
I got the station back up after midnight and moved to the
then-clear 3890 KC and logged a few more before turning in.
The result of all this was that if you didn't have a really
good signal, you didn't get heard. I'm very sorry, guys-
I could hear dozens of stations calling, and I was able to
work some of the weaker ones through persistence,
but there was just no way to pull most of you more distant folks
out from under the few selfish clowns
who insisted on grinding their axes last night.
And once those two northeast AM guys dropped on us, it was over.
*Gripe mode off*

Nevertheless, we did make 97 contacts with the WWII gear,
including both coasts and Canada.
The guys with the modern rigs worked over 300, IIRC.
I've posted a picture of the WWII gear side of the
operation tent on alt.binaries.pictures.radio
and at:

And in case the previous gave you the wrong impression,
I had an absolute blast getting the old beasts running and
working all of you I could hear. The SCR-274N got in some phone
and CW contacts as well, but our 40-meter CW effort with the
274N was hampered by the Michigan QSO party. The rig was getting out
well into a vertical and worked several states.
We even had two SCR-274N-to-SCR-274N contacts,
as well as one with a fellow running a T-22/ARC-5.
Next time we'll try to pick a less busy weekend.

SARA did a wonderful job creating this event and
I'm very grateful for the chance to contribute.
Lots of good publicity, too.
More later- I need some shut-eye ;-).
73 DE Dave Stinson AB5S

Mark K3MSB wrote:

Who were the Big Gun AM stations?


I didn't write down their calls- I was too busy
trying to pull just one more station out from under
them and, when it became impossible, I just shut
it down without getting their calls. All I remember
for sure is they were W1s.
73 Dave S.

David Stinson wrote:
Back from the W5E Special Event,
hosted by the Shreveport Amateur Radio Association and
the Eighth Air Force Museum at Barksdale Airforce Base
in North Louisiana.
What a great time!

Good goin'Dave! Great pictures of the set up too, will miss you at MRCG
at SLO. Its the tenth meeting already thanks to you, Ray, and Hank for
holding the first. Hey! I think your talk at the first MRCG was on the
BC-375 and neutralizing the set.

EdZ

David,
Sorry to hear that you had to deal with so much abuse from
other hams. Next time, post their callsigns here. The intentional
interference problem on the lowbands has gotten really bad, and
maybe its time to get the FCC involved. Probabaly not, but we
can hope....

Steve W6SSP