I'm resurrecting an HW-16 that I picked up at a swap
meet last month. I've gotten it working, aligned it
per the manual, and the tubes are all good. Output
power is about 45 Watts on 40m and 80m, and about 30
Watts on 15m, about what I expected. I do have some
questions for you HW-16 experts to ponder:

(1) The receiver is the most sensitive in the middle
of the VFO range, and the sensitivity falls off a lot
toward the ends of the VFO travel, regardless of where
I have it tuned when I do the alignment. All of the
alignment adjustments work like the manual says they
should. Any ideas on what might be wrong? I've owned
HW-16s in the past and I don't recall this being the
case with them (poor memory?).

(2) How would I change the audio frequency of the neon
reflex sidetone oscillator? 1 KHz is too high for me.
I'd prefer something around 750 Hz or so.

(3) The transmitter is chirpy. I know, all HW-16's are
chirpy. I found a mod on line which suggests adding a
220 pF mica cap from the screen grid of the oscillator
tube to ground to combat the chirp. I tried it, and I
find that if I add capacitance there, the oscillator
gets extremely sluggish. I tried various values from
100 pF to about 250 pF. Any thoughts on this?

(4) How can I increase the level of the spotting signal
that's heard in the receiver? If I could bring it up
high enough, I'd consider disabling the harsh sidetone
oscillator and just listen to the transmitted signal as
my sidetone, which is what I do with my homebrew tube
transmitters and Drake 2B receiver.

Your thoughts on any of this would be appreciated.

Thanks and 73,
Dean K5DH