[BC] How would you build it?

[David Senft]

There was a Gates BC-1T at one of the stations I worked for in the 60's.
Installed in late 1959, one by one the "heavy iron" parts blew over a period
of about 5 yrs. As Hammond's plant in Guelph Ontario was an easy source of
replacements, we'd order them based on the original specs. The Hammonds were
always more substantial, -often requiring some creativity to fit them in.
The performance was worth it. We changed the original 6BG6's (TV tubes) used
in the audio and RF driver stages to 807's (something that Gates also did
later). I mounted the four audio tubes vertically on a fabricated metal
shelf in place of the original printed circuit. Never had a catastrophic
failure after that. In the early 70's we replaced the mercury vapor and
vacuum-tube rectifiers with silicon. The rig ran as the only Tx for station
until 1977.