Mar 24, 2010 Radio Work on the B-17 Restoration Project

Spent a few hours at the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum today working on the BC-348 reciever.  Carroll-WX4Y and I showed up about 2:00pm and opened the reciever on the workbench and tested the tubes and some of the capacitors and resisters.  Seven of the eight tube are all still good!  The eighth needs to be replaced.  Pretty good.  Capacitors and resitors are looking good as well.  I took out the dynamotor which takes a 28 volt input and delivers 227 volts to power the tubes and we inspected the armature, the bushings, and the bearings.  The bearings still have grease!  Awesome.  Next visit we will service the dynamotor and test it with a 28 volt power supply.  Carroll will bring his service monitor and we will do some initial testing of the circuitry.  The restoration team has set us up with a very nice workstation.

Later in the day several other HAMs that are also going to be working on the project arrived for the restoration team "All Hands" meeting to get a project update from Jerry McLaughlin who is the project manager.  Steve-K4SDJ, Mark-KA4CID, and Al-KJ4SMY and myself enjoyed the company of other restoration volunteers as we had drinks and pizza.