Quote Originally Posted by KB3LAZ View Post
Finding one that does not look like it has been run over by a truck is tough. I see them on eham, QTH, and ebay now and again but it looks like they were really used to anchor a boat.
Think of it this way... My Viking 2 has been on this earth longer than me. It was born in 1952 and me in 1957. Most of them are going on 60 years old and probably a lot of them have been sitting in basements and are going to require some serious cleaning and restoration, i.e. recapping, etc. But once you get them going they are great rigs. Still, you have to consider how much restoration you are willing to do when you buy an older (or in this case ancient) radio. And tubes are expensive these days as well. Well the three rectifier tubes can easily be replaces with solid state diodes, the driver and speech amp tubes can be bypassed or replaced with a solid state circuit (which is what I wound up doing with mine), 6146's are expensive nowadays if you buy them online but sometimes can be had cheap at hamfests or maybe even this forum. 807's (the modulators) are still plentiful and I can probably help out with those. Old rigs are great and can be a lot of fun but there is the tradeoff. depending on condition and how long its been sitting around you might have to invest in considerable amount of restoration work in order to get a return.