[I suspect ICE to have impacted the two flower sellers at the cemetery. I try to visit the XYL's grave every Friday and bring fresh flowers. I purchase the flowers at a roadside stand near the cemetery entrance, where the price is excellent, and the selection is unique.
The two YL's who support the stand are sisters and have mentioned they are there "every day". Since I was away last Friday, I made my makeup visit yesterday and will be back again this coming Friday. The YL's are in place at 8AM. They were not there yesterday, and the time was 9AM. Since the town is Oxnard and the favorite fishing hole of ICE... we can surmise what happened! The XYL got a visit but no flowers.]
The beauty of my sojourn to Denver was to help clear my brain fog. With that clarity I can only say to myself what were you thinking.
The Project X radio is a Transcom SBT3. It was a short-lived product and only about 500 were made and sold. Two hundred were sold to the Philippine government and the rest sold to hams.
The SBT3 is a triband (80/40/20M) 100-watt SSB radio employing mostly transistors and two instant heating 8042 (6146 like) tubes. There are some innovations such as potentiometer tuned varactor diodes for peaking RF circuits and a three transistor Driver stage that developed enough RF to fully drive the 8042 RF amp tubes to 100 watts out.
I really overpaid to acquire the radio, but the idea was to fix it and then resell it with a large markup. I overestimated my ability to do so; but did have some success in restoring some aspects. I think my plan defines the word hubris.
Aside from being dirty (Krud Kleaner fixes that) some Bozo installed a micro-switch in a mounting hole whose sole purpose was to turn off the panel lights.
A black escutcheon trim that outlines the Frequency window and S Meter is made from a thin sheet of copper that is stamped to provide a contour outline and two viewing windows. This escutcheon is removable, and the original factory install simply soldered two flat head screws to the back side and in turn these screws were passed through the panel and nuts applied to the back side of the front panel.
Again, the Bozo must have tried to remove the escutcheon and pulled the piece from the screws. His solution was to drill right through the escutcheon and use a big bolt and washer to hold the assembly to the front panel. You can see that in the 1st photo. I was successful in fixing the micro-switch hole and the escutcheon hole.
Electronically, I actually found some OEM PNP transistors and replaced a couple of weak units and did some alignment. Prior blog posts mentioned that on transmit there is an inexplicable issue on 80M. The other bands do not have the issue.
Several of the control knobs were missing the aluminum insert. In one case I had a very close replacement knob and in another I made an aluminum insert.
Repaired Front Panel
Hole Repair of the Micro-Switch install
I stripped off the black paint and filled the hole with solder since the base material was copper and the repainted. The two flat head mounting screws were then super glued to the back of the escutcheon.
Trim and PA Tune Knobs
The next steps normally would be to modify the Tempo One power supply to fully power the Transcom SBT3. But that still does not resolve the lower level 80M signal issue nor any issues that might be found in the final amplifier stages. In short, a lot more work that most likely would only provide a marginal unit. C'mon Pete there was a reason not many were sold.
So, I may just stop here, rein in my hubris and sell the SBT3 at some future time for a deep discount. But putting aside the money spent, I sure learned a lot about how not to do things. With the XYL's passing at least I won't get from her the usual comment "you did something really stupid!"
Hubris = exaggerated pride or self-confidence
73's
Pete N6QW