Now that I have the AC4 rebuilt, I moved on to the T4XC. The transmitter was given to me probably 7 years ago by a now SK ham and has been stored by me since then. Probably not operated in over 10 years. It is a long story but he had two homes and he had to vacate one of them and his equipment ended up on the ground outside covered with a tarp outside. He called me and I got right over there and picked up the R4C/t4XC and MS4 as well as some other equipment. Fortunately, they had not been out there real long and were in fairly good shape. I would say good condition. The front panels are very good and the only sign of wear on both the RX and TX were that the chassis tops were discolored. Below chassis was very clean. This guy had an old pot-belly coal stove, and my suspicion is that the acids may have oxidized the chassis surface. It does not seem it did any other harm though.

So that's the backstory. I cleaned it, and deox'ed the tube sockets and controls/switches. First problem was the final filaments were out. Since they are series connected, I determined one of the 6JB6's had an open filament. Both tubes looked pretty beat so I replaced them with brand new 6JB6A's that I had. OK it now tunes up but since I have never had a Drake transmitter I have a few questions.

The bias was spot on according to the plate current meter. Surprising after the rebuild of the AC4 and sitting for all those years, but is the meter correct? Tune up on 80 meters gave good drive peak but the PA current does not seem right. The rig gives 100+ watts out but the PA meter is basically pegged at that power level.

The manual under CW tuning makes no mention of maximum PA current, but rather in section 3.12i says increase drive until there is no further increase in PA current. In my case that would be a pegged meter! I have not checked the meter shunt nor broken the PA voltage lead and measured actual current but I suspect the meter is not correct. Would 6JB6A's be any different than 6JB6's? I know I will need to check the neutralization but I don't think that is the issue here. Thoughts?

Doug, WA3DSP