If I was faced with a production line of dirty radios, i'd head for the dishwasher too.  But, for just one, the Krud Kutter, near full strength, a short dwell time, and a shot of hot water out of a water heater has worked to me.  I like to use compressed air to blow off the water before it evaporates, in case you are not using soft water.  Then,  a few hours at 170 deg F, or a hot sun, if avail. and then a fan blowing into the chassis for a couple of days will result in success.  The tubes get cleaned with the same KK, just separately.  Beware of paper wrapped caps, speaker cones, transformer paper, and meters. 

I wanna say that boring two holes in metal and running open wire thru those holes, even if the holes are big, with standoffs, is a bad idea.  Something about a one turn transformer, killing the signal.  But, I haven't tried that exact experiment.

 A warm wire inside is better than a flaming hole in the roof!

If the grounding conductor is of primary interest, consider using at least one thrubolt for the tower, and make it silicon bronze.  Attach the copper ground wire in the attic with a crimp ring terminal and double nuts.   This assumes access is possible inside.  I'd use #6 Cu as the conductor, nothing smaller.  As the conductor gets smaller, it will heat more in a strike and become more of an issue with all the wood that is touching it.  Commercial lightning mitigation uses closer to 2/0, but I recall that code is a function of how many stories the building is. I've read where #6 Cu will survive something like 90% of strikes, certainly not all!

I've got a couple.  One is a Telex, the other is a low end Procom something.  Anyway, I did a somewhat successful "converter box" to make these work with my T4X.   It took the usual low voltage DC source thru a resistor, series cap, and a step up transformer to get enough voltage to drive the Drake.  My issue is EMI.  One headset is affected by high power fields on 75m, the other on 40m.  High power being 1kw into a dipole 60' away.  Now, I know that old time airplane mics used to be carbon type, and these are a far cry from what modern headsets use, and sure enough, there is a IC inside these headsets with a bunch of supportive passives.  I'll take it that the IC mimics the carbon mic action, basically feeding a more modern electret mic from the boom.  I tried some ferrite beads with no good effect.  Anyone out there solve aviation headset EMI issues? 

thanks manual man.  ur manual led me to a 0.5v cal pot.  ANd the soap trick worked well also.

Great links, though I'm left with a meter with a different schematic than the 232.  Looks like the $16 Nebraska deal is the only one on the table.  My ohms issue is gone after a day's on time in the cabinet.  Seems some magnetic influence messed with the linearity of the scale. Battery holder is/was perfect on this unit; went thru deoxid, and new filter cap, good to go now.  Just the one mystery pot.  The 25Mohm input and the different adjustments for + and - volts are unusual to this model.   

I know "boatanchor" is a stretch here, but I know you guys are cool with this.  After all, the device does have two tubes.   Anyway, I can't seem to located a schematic for this rather rare 235 model.  It's like a 232, except it has a larger meter, and has 5 calibration pots.  One pot does DCV + , one does DCV-, one for ACV, one for AC zero.  Can't get an effect from the 5th pot, doesn't affect ohms, just don't know??  THe unit does suffer from an ohms issue;  my 1% cal resistor looks good on the scale resulting in 2/3 deflection, but gets to a 20% error with the next scale down.  I've got this VTVM for grid DC measurements, so the ohms is not high on my need list.

Also from K2KW:

Lesson #3: Under most any circumstance, radials should be elevated.

When we first installed the 80m vertical in Jamaica during the ARRL DX Contest, we laid the resonant radials on the ground, believing (as most would) that being on the ocean, etc., that everything would tune up OK and work great. The joke was on us! While tuning the vertical, we were unable to get a proper match. We tried various matching coils, adjusting everything adjustable, all to no avail. The clue we had was that the tuning meter on the MFJ antenna analyzer showed a high value (>50 ohms) even without a matching coil. The antenna should be down in the 20 ohm range, as it is linear loaded and physically short. A full size vertical should be in the low 30 ohm range. When we added a matching coil to the already high VSWR feedpoint, the VSWR got higher! (it should have been lower) All of us glared at N6BT, who is supposed to know everything! Tom did deduce that the radials were obviously coupling into what must be extremely lossy ground (not expected). The interaction with the lossy ground was the single largest factor which impacted the tuning and performance of the vertical antennas.

What to do? Fortunately, Tom had recently read an IEEE article about adding elevated radials to AM broadcast stations that had disintegrating buried radial systems. One of the key points was that the new radials needed to be elevated, not the whole antenna. Actually, the radials can be lifted at an abrupt angle right at the antenna and then run horizontally. We left the vertical in place, but raised the radials around six feet. Immediately we were able to obtain a good match. We concluded that all radials at this location needed to be elevated due to the interaction with the very lossy ground. For the ARRL Contest, we elevated the 160m and 80m radials by around 6 feet, the 40m radials by four feet, and we left the 20m radials sloping from about a foot, down close to the ground. When we returned for the CQ WW CW Contest, we elevated all radials.

When raising the radials, the key is to get them high in as short a horizontal distance as possible, and then run them horizontally. We used two methods: using bamboo poles mounted very close to the vertical to support the radials, we also made loops in the guy ropes to suspend the radials via porcelain insulators.

K2KW has been on other expeditions where he used verticals mounted in the sand, right by the ocean. Many times he said he was unable to achieve a good match. He now knows that the key is to raise the radials.

Cell phone volume sales has driven down the cost for at least "more linear" PA's with 3G services.  At least for the cellular bands.
The big benefit for going SSB is battery life and increased range, all else being equal. I'd have to think more on the SSB repeater issue, that might be solvable.

Look for a FCC Part 15 Class B rating.  Or, a CE mark.  Beyond that, buyer beware.  Actually, that device is not legal for sale here if it doesn't meet the FCC spec IF it has internal frequency generation beyond a certain power and fundamental freq.  Class B is a tighter spec, and is designed for home use. 

Sorry, no.  That's a directional coupler.  My slotted line device demanded that the operator physically move a RF probe back and forth inside a essentially a coax with a slot cut lengthwise.  So, you would move the equivalent of a quarter wave to get the max and min RF voltage on the center conductor.  THen do the division of Vmax / Vmin = SWR.  Can you imaging adjusting your antenna tuner doing all that?  You had it easy, even with the old HK.  

I forgot something.  You can measure the wavelength with the slotted line also. Probably won't get you the accuracy of a HK GR64 even.

I suppose I'm still compelled to think that you want to keep the radials close to the surface and NOT bury them, especially if you are dealing with lossy soil, which all soil is.

And, thankfully, my testing was vhf.  Can you imagine a slotted line to work 160 meters?

For better or worse, I'm old enough to have used a slotted line probe and a RF voltmeter.  You move the probe back and forth until you find the Min and Max and do simple division.  As I recall..