Ameco AC-1 Novice CW Transmitter
The AC-1 was a crystal controlled transmitter kit for Novices sold by Ameco in the 50's and 60's. These seem to be very collectible now days but I didn't want it because it's collectible, but because it was the transmitter I dreamed of having as a kid and never got.
Back around the very early 1970's, when I was about 14 or so, I wanted to become a ham and got my hands on a 1968 copy of "How to Become a Radio Amateur" from the ARRL. In the back was this full page Ameco ad of their ham equipment including the AC-1. It sold for $21.95 and my mom gave me the money to order it. I was really disappointed about a month later when a letter came back from Ameco, with my mom's check enclosed, saying that the AC-1 was no longer available. It's taken me over 45 years to get my AC-1 but it has finally arrived in the mail. |
Top view of the AC-1 as received. It needs some tender loving care, but only has one non-original hole: someone added a 1/4" phone jack for the key. I can live with the added key jack since it is the kind of mod I might have done myself back then. But whoever added the jack wired it wrong - the jack's center pin was connected to the crystal and not through the RF choke to key the cathode of the 6V6.
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The original coil was apparently wound for 40M but had only 13-1/2 turns of wire (the instructions call for 15-1/2 turns). Plus, someone tried to solder a tap to the coil and soldered the two bottom windings together, shorting them. And then they soldered one end of the coil to the wrong pin of the socket so the coil was not even connected in circuit. Now I'm beginning to understand how they managed to melt down the transformer. Shown on the left is a new phenolic coil form ordered from eBay for winding the 80M coil.
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The original dual electrolytic capacitor tested bad on my Heathkit IT-28 capacitor checker so I decided to rebuild the capacitor to keep things looking original. I removed the paper shell and cut open the aluminum can, which was pretty dried up inside. After cleaning the shell I drilled holes through the can's original wire connections points to bring out the. wires from the new capacitors, and then stuffed two 10uf - 450VDC caps inside the old can. From the outside the capacitor still looks original (see photo below).
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I had a couple of options for replacing the burned up power transformer. There's the replacement that came with it, but it doesn't match the original, and I have one I purchased to build an AC-1 clone that is a bit taller than an original.
To get the AC-1 up and running I used the the one that came with it, but then I found an even better match to an original at a hamfest, so I removed the first transformer and installed the hamfest one in its place. |
Last update 5/17/2022