back end of any Heathkit manual, the "how it works" section.

descriptions/circuits section of any RCA receiving tube manual.

just about any old Popular Electronics article has a "how it works" section as well.

believe the old GE Transistor Manuals from the early 60s also show example circuits and how the actives in the circuit work.

or are you looking for something like old DeVry or RCA Institutes home study manuals, which are often on ePay?  I learned a ton from a neighbor's old DeVry course books in the mid 60s.

hang in, Vince.  tin-star dictator manager who hoses everything she touches just gave my wife a 10-day unpaid for following directions 3-1/2 years ago.  needless to say, the clusterish conditions surrounding same are run up the flagpoles at Institutional Compliance and General Counsel there, as well as the union channels and the Federal and state labor departments.

I'm working under the old contract day-to-day along with 13,000 union buddies while the clueless who bought our outfit read the list of takebacks bottom to top on odd days, top to bottom on even days, hoping one of them will sound wonderful to our negotiators.

the instructions we got for mobilization are apt for you while you're wondering how it's going to work out.  fix the cars, yourself if you can.  stock up on canned goods, cleaning supplies, and freezer food.  put the heating oil in the tank now.  pay as many small bills as you can, put as much as you can in savings.  economize.  get the haircut now and shine up the good shoes.

it's a jungle out there, and the big stinky apes rule.  take care of yourselves first, shine up the resume, and brush up on older skills that might be the next buzzword.

and if you find a good deal on a spare set of finals, jump.  you might need 'em in your spare time.

look for 22K half watt resistors from B+ to plate.  replace 'em with 1 or 2 watters in metal oxide.

well, they SAY they're 22K.  I've got some I swapped out in my HW-100 (still a work in progress, everybody needs a hobby) that were over 41K.  and they don't stay on one value in use.

for that matter, the more resistors you lift a lead on, the more you will find that are seriously out of value in the Green Line due to age.  this is one reason why Heathkits didn't make Collins look like a bargain rig.

filter demodulator?  balanced demodulator?  it looks like two of whatever, probably uncoupled, with B+ across the top for two tube sections through chokes, in one can to make it easy for those lax civilians to crank out a dozen a day for the war machine.  whatever it is, I'll bet it sat between two tetrodes without much else connected to the sockets.

if you can resonate either filter section with a JFET oscillator and read the frequency on a counter, that would be a good clue.

as I collected transistors over the years, from extras as I ordered for a project, or by disassembly of old stuff, I looked them up and tested with a go-nogo squeal tester, and binned them according to their ECG (now NTE) cross reference.  when I need to slap something together or fix an item, I know exactly what I have. I got that right at least.

as the dual gate MOSFETS disappear as the germaniums already have, that junk box is becoming quite dear.

in 5 or 10 years, if you dump that stock, you may welll regret it.

there are two considerations... current capability and noise.

recently had to replace the blower motor on the wife's Taurus, and the wires to the thing were all baked and crumbling.  we had noticed for some time that if the glovebox was moved or opened, the blower went full speed no matter what was selected.  that's function of the wires burning up from inadequate design and shorting to the frame periodically afterwards, bypassing the resistor in the ground lead.

14 amp blower, 20 amp lighter socket, same 16 gauge wire which is rated for 10 amps max.  you do the math.  the automakers are figuring on intermittent or reduced usage in their circuits, so the higher peak load averages out to a lower mean load, and they figure the wiring should cool off.

this augurs for big fat ugly thick wiring straight to the battery all by itself.

on to noise.  all of these bundled wires with computer-control leads to the body module, engine module, security module, money-eating-often-failing module, fuel pump,  etc. create lots and lots of square wave noise.  do you really want to couple that nonsense common-mode into your radio?

when I was a innocent little bairn learning to swear at the engineer's knee in the broadcast control rooms waiting for Dad to take me home, car accessories had vibrators and 0Z4 noise-generator rectifiers.  sounded like bacon frying if you put another radio in those things.  you got past all the line noise going with a #8 or #6 (if you had a 50 watt VHF band business radio in the trunk) back to the battery, and what was left filtered out with a couple big caps.

second reason to go back there.  a car battery is the world's biggest smoothing capacitor.

BAMA manual says, "... the (PTT) switch in the microphone activates the relay..." and both that and SW8 transmit/PTT take their feed off the top of the VR tube string per the schematic.  so you need a DC plate circuit relay, DPDT or DPST, probably in the 5000 ohm class so you don't load the regulated voltage too much.

there is more commerce in illegal narcotics than all the copyright goods in the world.  so, how's one more greedhead with a room full of rabid lawyers going to keep me from buying some moldy old piece of radio junque so I have a complete set of Sparkenflamben 1000 hardware?

the more I think about this, the more I think the case should be returned as "certiorai granted in error."  alias, "go sit on your writ."

highway contractors basically all bring their CB rigs and bolt 'em whatever truck they're using.  keeps use of the (squEEP!) Sprint phones down so the batteries last all day.

as I remember, fighting wars.

you can whistle up a BFO with a FET and a couple of ceramic filters of the right IF frequency.  pad one down and one up with capacitors for USB/LSB, and run a wire from the source into the chassis near the detector circuitry.

it won't be up to Heathkit standards, but you can make out the voices if you are careful adjusting things.

you will kink solid copper tubing trying to bend it because the material has been heat annealed in extruding it.  the bendable stuff has a thicker wall, curiously, but was not reheated after extrusion.

otherwise, if you need the stability, you will have to get a nice hot torch passed along the bend radius to resoften the copper, and preferably bend with a filler in there like fine sand.  when cooling and the color has left the copper, dip or spray it with water to anneal it again.

just for an experiment, you could try using silver solder and make the "bends" with elbow fittings.  I'm not off wire antennas yet, so haven't fiddled with self-supporting structures.

if you can get 60 dB gain, you can drive earphones.

just about any inverting op-amp in any spec sheet can be tickled up there, or you can cascade two amps at 30 dB each, and hook that to a set of cans.

if all you are looking for is gain, and not quality, plug the mic into the magnetic phono input of a stereo receiver and earphones into the other.  the RIAA equalization will make it sound like a cricket, but it's go-nogo for zero investment.

I have read that Eimac recommends soap and water.  silver polish should work fine for the anodes and grid rings.  I would not be soaking up the tube in electrolytic solutions... the ceramic is not glazed against moisture, and it would sux to embed something that would be a permanent flash-over.

the monitor, subwoofer, et al are in compliance with the FCC labelling that they "must accept any radio interference presented to them."  that's squirrelly language which doesn't say they have to work right when in a strong RF field.

the antenna is working fine, putting that field out.

obviously, the radio tunes, so it's OK.

the problem is that RF field is not supposed to be that close to the stuff.  all the suggestions prior to this are correct... start with grounding the radio to a good earth ground, and then adding baluns, counterpoises, and ferrites in that order.  the general idea is that RF should all be going up and out, and you have a bit much coming down and in yet.  once that issue is solved, block what's left in the badly-designed, shoddily-assembled, and vulnerable consumer electronics with ferrites and maybe extra shielding on the cables.

oh, and fair warning, there are high voltages in the rig, in the vicinity of 800 volts on the output tube plates and 250-300 volts on the suppressor grids and driver plate.  they show up in the darndest places.

you don't want to be in those places, especially with one hand resting on the grounded chassis.