W5VA Homebrew Transmitter

This homebrew transmitter was built by W5VA, T. Frank Smith, Sr. I rescued it from a trip to the dump in 2006 when his grandson, who I've know for decades, called me to come look at something before he hauled it off. I remembered this transmitter in Mr. Smith's garage in the early 1970s. I thought it was long gone. WHAT A DISCOVERY! It was not stored in the best of conditions for many years and will need quite a bit of work to completely restore it. It is now safely stored here at my home. One large transformer did not survive.

I did remove the power deck and found the wirewound resistor is open. I will have to rewind this as there is certainly no replacement around. Frank called me in the Fall of 2008 when he was cleaning out another store room. What we found was another cabinet that I did not know existed. I thought the connectors on the extension wires fed a control panel. They actually feed a very large power supply cabinet. I also found the large output loading coil that was missing. Wow! what finds these were. I now have all the parts for this transmitter. I will post pictures of these items when time permits.
Click on thumbnails for more pictures.

Front Views

Power Supply Deck

Osc/Buffer Deck

Driver Deck

RF Deck

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