RESURRECTION
 OF
AN HT-37 EXCITER


BEIGE, BEIGE, what the? I have never seen a piece of Hallicrafters gear that was beige.

Well, I saw this HT-37 on E-Bay, said Humm it's time for the next set of matching equipment, so lets do a SX-111
receiver, and the HT-37 exciter, and maybe for laughs, the HT-41 linear amplifier. These were supposed to be low
end equipment for the beginning (Novice type) Amateur Radio Operator, all except the amplifier.

Well I got first, an HT-37, and I want to tell you pictures LIE, and people hide the truth as well. Described as a
complete unit needing a little work to get it going again, I spotted this exciter and figured I'd get a decent piece
of equipment that I could refurbish and get going, and use as the exciter element in the "Low-End" station.

The exciter came in in a single box, after traveling UPS ground (again), I paid for DOUBLE BOXING to insure
safety to the unit. It arrived in a single box with a plastic "Comforter Bag" over the unit. The box was filled with about
a one (1) inch layer all around, of styro-foam peanuts. I said to my-self "I paid for double boxing at a mail-boxes
etc, and THIS is what I get!" The seller didn't put any screws in the top cover of the unit, and it was rattling around
inside the plastic bag, luckily, nothing got broken. I carried the unit outside to the front of the garage, where I have
a work table, to open it as I've had people ship items with crawly creatures in them, and I didn't want any of those
in the house, if there were any in there.

Opened the plastic bag, removed the Exciter from same, finished taking the loose top cover off the unit, and take
my first look at the inside of the unit that "Would only take a (Little work) to bring it back to life", and knew I had
been had again! There where the power transformer was "SUPPOSED" to be was a very empty hole. The only thing
there was some leaves and spider webs and clipped wires. The top-side of the chassis had rust in various spots,
some bad some not so bad. The cabinet was a mess, rust inside and out, some very MAJOR spots totally removing
the paint. But the funniest thing was the cabinet was Beige, that is correct Beige! Well laughter is the best medicine,
so I had a really good one and surveyed the rest of this fiasco.

Tubes were mostly all there, no high voltage rectifier (5R4) , no low voltage rectifier (5V4), it did have a pair of RCA
6146 finals in it that "looked" ok no burn marks etc; and everything else Seemed to be there. So out came the cleaning
brushes, and lets get the dirt and spider webs and nests out of the thing. I removed the bottom cover and got all of the
leaves out of the under-side and checked for broken/burned components, there were none apparent.

I decided to strip the outer cabinet to the metal in order to stop the rust and also to paint it back to the original color.
Here is the cabinet  before shots top and bottom, and the stripped to the metal shots top and bottom. Then I lubed
and cleaned the bare pieces with WD-40 and copious amounts of 409, to remove the flammable nature of the WD-40.
Followed that with three complete coats inside and out of Grey Primer/ Rust inhibitor paint. These are shots of the
two halves with the finished primer coats. then two complete coats of Grey Gloss paint, to put the cabinet back to
a close approximation of the Hallicrafters color. (Actually Blue-Grey). So here are the two pieces Top and bottom
halves of the cabinet, all painted and ready for the exciter when it is done.

The missing transformer, much to my chagrin, was replaced by a transformer from Peter Dahl, Ahem, you don't
want to make a habit of buying transformers from there. The transformer, costs more than I paid for the rig plus
shipping. Fortunately I found this one in the "care" of another Amateur operator, and traded a working Central
Electronics 20A for it, "go figure", I think it was an even trade!


Here is the finished product, of a lot of  painting sanding, and cursing!




The SX-111 Receiver






I got this SX-111 off E-bay at a very low cost, and I figured it was cheap because the description
said, "Don't know if this works, but it lights up", waited out the time on it and there was a single
low bid for it, so I bid for it and got it. Was I surprised when it arrived, it was really clean.





It had not been banged up in shipping
so all the knobs were OK.




Even the meter was working!






So I opened it up to clean it out from dust
on the chassis.






Then because the Original Manual
came with the unit, I did a full
alignment per the book.





That makes the transmit/Receive Setup.

Now on to the ELUSIVE HT-41
Amplifier