Homebrew transmitter done! And it works!

"6SL7 is the high-mu octal."
I KNEW it was hiding in there somewhere, I was hung up on the 6SK7 because I scrounged tubes from the junk pile behind the local TV shop. The 6SK7 was the vertical oscillator in 50s and 60s B&W TVs. I also had piles of 7025s and other routine maintenance pulls from WERA before it went dark.

Being a tube man in a solid state world I built from what I scrounged, modified ham transmitters for AM Gangsta audio and built a copy of the Gates Sta-Level along the way. One thing to pass along I learned the hard way when Crazy Glue, Super Glue, etc. came on the market is it was designed for use as surgical glue, so it bonds skin best followed by porous materials and nothing else. Contrary to "as advertised" it will NOT bond metal, only stick it together temporarily.

I built a regulated bias supply into a Johnson Ranger, the only place to mount the transformer was on the inside front sub panel above the function switch. Unfortunately it didn't have feet, so visualizing that guy with the hard hat hanging from an I beam I glued it on. There for a time the 1614s (metal 6L6s) stopped swinging and the 6146 final had a steady bias, everything running like a Swiss watch. You remember clockwork don't you? I even remember A Clockwork Orange. Then one day it happened, the transformer fell on the switch and started a fire, by the time the cooling fan stopped and the fire smothered itself there was considerable damage. Yep, old cotton covered rubber insulation burns fiercely, it was a time consuming delicate job replacing it. The bias transformer fared well, the next time I did it the way I should have in the first place. I put a frame from some other transformer on it and fastened it in place with self tapping screws. The inside sub panel makes things painful most times, but this time it was a saving grace.