Mirror, mirror...

[KC4VWU]

What do you think guys, will it play?

Phil

[W2PFY]

Maybe, I had one like it and likely still have it. It worked fine except it looked real bad.I may have caused the problem? It's real easy to ruin an 833 when you have plate voltages over about 2200 volts. At 3200 you running on the wild side and those who venture up to 4KV and riding nitro express. You'll punch holes in the plate so fast, that only a person who truly hates ham radio, would like to see that happen!

[KA3EKH]

A 833 is a incredibly tough tube. When I was a pup one of the engineers I first started working with decided one night to remove all four 833 tubes in a Gates BC-1 and clean them and when he put them back he found that as soon as you apply plate voltage the main would trip on the transmitter. He ask me to look at it to see if I can find out what was wrong and after looking at a couple things discovered that one of the two 833 in the PA were installed backwards, the grid was where the plate was supposed to be and the plate connected to the grid.  One tube was installed correctly and the other reversed in the parallel PA and after swapping the one tube the way it was supposed to be everything came up and worked without issue. That tube survived well over a thousand volts on the grid with no ill effects.
On all the old broadcast transmitters both Gates and RCA it would be common to tune those till the plates just started to turn red when at full power. Modulators usually lasted about a year with RF tubes living for around two years.
I sold my RCA BTA-1 that I had on 160 some time back and gave about a half dozen tubes including a couple brad new never opened RCA bottles with it, they were still in the RCA box but have not seen a 833 in use in commercial service in maybe twenty years.
Never saw one that looks as bad as yours.

[Opcom]

at the end there's only one way to find out - getter it if it's been sitting and then run it up to HV to test.

[KC4VWU]

Thanks guys for the input. What really stumps me is pretty much the whole envelope is shiny, like its gettered. I can see the internals from the sides of the plate, and from what I can see,m it looks O.K., but pretty much front and back is like a mirror. I've seen quite a few 833A's, but never saw one like this. One thing to note is it's Chinese made, so one only has to wonder.