After buying the Hallicrafters S-77A, I was enthralled with the other radio that Mr. Hall had. He wanted 75 for it. I counted my pennies, scraped and scrounged, and a couple of weeks later, my dad took me back to get it. I thrust73 into Mr. Hall’s hand and said, “this should do it, can I take it now?”
We hauled it home. Then hauled in a car battery to run it. It was a shortwave AM/CW transceiver, nominally 25W final output (although who knows with the bad matching finals), and a VHF AM transceiver – but the VHF was rather useless, honestly.
I spent many a night playing with that set, repairing and modifying its circuitry, sending covert music transmissions which I’m sure nobody but the neighbours heard, and just generally learning about radio and high voltage. Oh, did I mention that it had a motor-generator set that pushed the 12V battery signal to about 520Vdc (well nominally, with a very high pitched MG set whine), for the HF RF final amplifier? Yeah, I got a few pokes off of that one. That hurt a lot more than the 260Vdc vibrator-driven B+ for the receiver! Heh heh. But I survived… and gained a grudging respect for high voltage DC.