Production Year 1959?

The Heathkit Seneca VHF-1 has a power input on 6 meters of 140 watts CW and 120 watts on phone. On 2 meters the power input is 110 watts on CW and 95 watts on phone. The output impedance is 50 to 72 ohm. The transmitting modes are AM and CW. On AM the Seneca uses screen modulated and on CW it incorporates controlled carrier. The frequency coverage is 48.9 to 54 mc and 143.7 to 148.3 mc

This transmitter can be operated either by 4 fixed crystal control frequencies or by VFO. There is a large slide-rule tuning dial with vernier tuning. This transmitter has two built in power supplies and five RF stages. There is two dual-triode audio stages and the finals are a pair of 6146's.

A neat feature of the Seneca is the spotting switch which is provided so the operator can zero beat an incoming signal which allows for tuning of the transmitter before switching on the final amplifier. There is an auxiliary socket that provides for convenient receiver muting, remote operation of an antenna relay and remote voice control of the transmitter.

The power requirements is 117 volts at 50-60 cycles. In standby mode the power consumption is 120 watts, and while under full load the power consumption increases to 400 watts.

The size is 16 5/8 inches wide by 10 1/8 inches high by 10" inches deep.

This is one tough little transmitter. But BEWARE of the power cord as it is a fused plug on both sides which can kill you real fast and make your wife a widow. "How?" You might ask and "aren't the fuses there to prevent any danger to me? After all there is two of them." First off, NO!! The two fuses in the plug is there to protect the equipment and not you. Now please stick with me as I run down a possible deadly scenario.

1) The transmitter with it's fused plug suffers an internal short, such as in a transformer or bypass capacitor, with the short circuit more or less to the chassis.

2) When the short happens it causes one of the line cord plug fuses to blow(sadly, almost never will both blow unless the fault is a dead short.)

3) You unplug the thing, disconnect the good station ground wire and antenna and move it to the work bench to figure out what is wrong. Take notice that the ground you had on the chassis is now removed. This means that the other safety measures such as the breaker box fuse in your home and/or a GFI switch will no longer work when power is applied.

4) Now at your workbench you plug it back in and haplessly insert the unpolarized plug so the intact fuse puts the line voltage on the chassis.

5) You reach for the power switch, the current kills you and your wife becomes a widow and we see your stuff listed at auction under the title "From the estate of a SK".

 REPLACE that fused plug and/or make sure that both wires on the power cord is not fused. There should be only one fuse.

Now besides Heathkit, The Johnson company put these fused plugs on their Rangers, Valiants, and other equipment. It is also possible to run into them from other manufactures or from items that have been modified by a previous owner. This includes the addition of one of these fused plugs or the addition of a fuse(some times located under the chassis) so that now both wires of the power cord has a fuse.

Now there does seem to be at least two applications for the fused line plugs. One is on electric fence energizers and the other is them decorative Christmas candles and light strings. On the electric fence situation it is based on a long history, and safety may very well rely on the idea that the case of the energizer is grounded with a ground rod to make the electric fence work properly. As for the Christmas candles and light strings, these items have no metal chassis, no metal On/Off switch and no transformer so there is very little exposure if any at all of energized conductors to come into contact with people.

Not the best picture but hopefully it will give you some idea as to what the inside of the Heathkit Seneca VHF-1 looks like with the top lid raised.