You wanna see one up close and personal? What state do you live in? I bought mine from John Russo KF2JQ in August of last year and I'm slowly, (ever so damn slowly,) getting it up to snuff. It's the RTTY version (GPT-750C2) that originally came with the XFK in the center drawer. I took that out and retired it to doorstop duty, and now the middle drawer is home to my Amelco 390a, and a seperate 19" rack is going along side with the modulator as soon as I can get it done.(Mod iron and reactor is just too big and heavy to be placed in the drawer) My goal is to have it up and running for the Heavy Metal Rally this year. I've already used it on CW at 1000W(took the 4-250's out and put in a pair of brand spankin'-ass new Eimac 4-400's
), and I've used it a little on SSB with the SBE that come with it as an extra from John, but slopbucket's just no fun. This radio was complete and operable and not to mention in unmolested condition just like the day it came out of service. All it needed was a good dust cleaning and some paint and lettering touchup.
I drove from Waterbury CT to Buffalo to pick this sucker up, (950 miles round trip) on a Sunday in one of our utility body trucks so we could load up all 900 lbs of spine twisting transmitter with a lift gate. John is a great guy and helped taking the 3 drawers out and loading the cabinet. After getting home, the VERY first thing she got was a new set 'o sneakers. I bought these 1000lb ea., 4" locking swivel casters from Graingers and bolted those to the original foot the radio had on it. These are some sweet high quality wheels that make it so this beast rolls around like butter.
Right now all that really left to do is some wiring and testing. The modulator consists of a Moloney potted mod transformer (850watt CCS, 225lb's) and a potted Moloney reactor(49H, about 80lb's) out of Gates xmitter (BC1G I think), a 5uF 10kV (about 60lbs) oil cap for decoupling. This whole thing is for 833's in B. It's been a busy year so far for us, (HVAC), but hopefully I can get the time set aside to get this thing completed.
Yes, 833a's are serious overkill for 4-400's, but I have a dozen of them laying around, so I might as well use them.
I had a bunch of picks of the refurb, but a HD crash took care of that. I'll take some new one's asap and get them up here.
I kind of glad to see someone else with some interest in TMC gear other than just a damn deaf GPR-90. There's very little info on the net that's helpful when it comes to these radio's. I guess not too many people want to get involved with a transmitter as heavy, not to mention complicated as these are. Did I mention complicated?
They're really nothing to work on after you get past the wiring nightmare, and understand what TMC was trying to accomplish in the design. These are literally made to be run non stop, round the clock, by idiots. In other words, the whole thing is super heavy duty overkill, and there's a safety, or a fuse, or a breaker for everything. Right down to switches on the shaft's of some controls, (Band, Mode, etc.) that will knock off the high and mid B+ if you try to change bands, modes, tuning, whatever, with the key down. A tree branch falls on your antenna, plate current spikes, a breaker opens, with an idiot light to tell you it opened. It's built with all anodized aluminum chassis' and SS hardware. Only the main cabinet is steel, and it's got 80 coats of dark blue hammertone paint on it, so rusting at sea, or anywhere else isn't an issue. Transformers are all potted, no paper caps, or other consumer grade parts used anywhere. TMC made these to be bulletproof, nuf said.
That's enough typing for now.
73 Jared W1ATR
SK
