In order to complete my Drake novice station, I had been looking for a 2-NT transmitter for a month or two. I found one on eBay last week and purchased it. As with the 2-C receiver, I paid a bit more than I would have liked to. But supply is limited, and demand is high. I only had photos to go by, as the seller was not a ham and it was sold as is, untested.
Cosmetically, it looked good. The front panel looked like a 9 out of 10. The rest of the unit looked dirty. There may have been some corrosion on the top of the chassis, which is not unusual. So I took a chance on it. Taxes and shipping add to an already inflated price. But I was pleasantly surprised when it arrived today. It was probably in a bit better condition than the 2-C was. I cleaned it up and looked it over. I had already ordered an electrolytic capacitor kit from Hayseed Hamfest. Looking under the chassis, there appeared to be more caps than I expected. The can cap was still in place, but there were additional caps soldered in the area. It seems someone replaced the 3 part can cap with individual caps soldered under the chassis. The can cap was left in the circuit however, which is not a good idea, but it made soldering the new ones in easier. But I figured I could power it on without too much worry.
Unfortunately, it would not power on. Fuse was OK. So I checked some voltages, and power was getting to the On-Off switch, but not beyond it. The On-Off switch was at the back of the function switch. The function switch has a couple of wafers, but the On-Off was by itself, mounted on the back of the switch. I shorted the two pins together, and it powered up. The On-Off switch looked a little like the type you see on the back on a potentiometer. Figuring that finding a replacement would be hard or impossible, I attempted to take the switch apart. I got it about half way apart, and I didn’t see an easy way to go the rest of the way without breaking it. I couldn’t really get at the contacts. So I sprayed it with Deoxit and worked it back and forth. Checking resistance, it seemed to be working.
I put it all back together, and it powered on via the On-off switch. I could see the pilot lamp for the meter was burned out. I didn’t have a good #47, so I put in a #44. It was also 6.3 V, so I figured I’d try it. Looks good.
Next thing was to see if it works, and yes, it was working (on 40 meters). The plate current meter seems to moved wildly when keying the rig, but reads OK when key down. It just made 75 watts input power, but should go a bit higher, like about 90 watts.
The nice thing about pairing the 2-NT and 2-C together, is they have built-in T/R switching, muting, and CW sidetone.
I’ll be replacing the caps this next week, and going over the rig a little closer, checking for any possible parts issues. This rig is an early production unit, #0126, from 1966 (when I was in fourth grade).
