Down the Rabbit Hole
Building a solid state DC converter to power a 1950’s era mobile tube transmitter. The build uses an NOS Triad TY-83 toroidal transformer and high-power germanium transistors – the best available power conversion tech in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
Over the last year and a half, I’ve been restoring a Ten Tec “Closet Kilowatt” from the late 80’s for a solar powered station. It consists of a model 253 Automatic Antenna Coupler, model 420 Hercules II amp and model 564 Omni VI Plus.
With the Ten Tec Argonaut 509 restored and working well, it was time to try it out. The Anderson Power Pole made it easy to connect an 8 amp hour gel cell. I hooked it up to my end-fed half-wave antenna and listened around 20 meters. There were plenty of CW signals and I quickly realized a CW filter was going to be needed.
By now, I’ve written about quite a few classic Ten Tec radios. There are those who would argue that the Argonaut, first introduced in 1972, started it all though. It was the first recognizably Ten Tec product and would set the style for decades to come. It was also the first popular QRP transceiver that included both CW and SSB modes.
The Ten Tec Omni VI+ and CAT Control In an earlier post, I described acquiring and repairing a Ten Tec Omni VI+ (model 564) transceiver.…
In late 2020, I bought a Ten Tec Omn VI+ transceiver (model 564). It was a big step for me since most Ten Tec equipment I had purchased before was older and pretty inexpensive. The Omni VI+ represented a step up both in performance and cost. Released in 1997 with an MRSP of $2850, It was Ten Tec’s flagship at the time.
Lately, I’ve been restoring a Dynaco ST 150 stereo amplifier. As my collection of classic vinyl recordings grows, I’ve assembled the ultimate 1970’s playback system. Coming of age in the mid-70’s, I coveted the then-new high-power solid state amplifiers.
In part one of this restoration, we tackled the Ten Tec Omni C’s two most glaring problems: garbled signals on receive and blowing fuses when the radio was switched to the 30-Meter band. I could now receive and transmit signals in almost all the band switch positions, albeit with varying sensitivity and power output. It had been quite a chase so far, and the remaining repairs would prove equally challenging.
I purchased a Ten Tec Omni Series C transceiver about a year ago for my collection. At the time, I was in the middle of several other projects, and didn’t get to it until just recently. I had been using an Omni D, but it still needs work and I thought the “C” would be a nice upgrade.
In the last post, I described a used Ten Tec Triton IV and addressed the most immediate issues. I also mentioned making a cosmetic restoration, but after using it in the shack for an evening, it was apparent there were other problems. The “Offset Tuning” (OT) LED didn’t work, and more seriously, the transceiver didn’t always mute in transmit. Strange sounds issued from the speaker at times.