Bill,
Sounds like you ran into some "bad" old stuff. Yes, some ham gear does use things like that. My brother-in-law owns a commercial radio business in Southwestern VA, and is quite involved also in amateur radio. Let's face it, sometimes its the only thing left working, someone gave him this old Collins transmitter/receiver. It was over 6' tall, and well over 200 pounds. We cleaned it up, plugged it in and popped the key. Then we replaced the 40 amp fuses in his shop with 60's and tried it again, yes it was wired for it. I got an amprobe, and informed him if he wanted to continue playing with that old thing we were gonna have to upgrade.....it was drawing 63 amps !!!!! The newer stuff usually does not do this. I can put our 1300 watts with total amp draw of around 24.
