OK, per advice from others in this newsgroup, I am beginning my search
for a good Collins KWM-2A.

From others' descriptions here, I prefer the -2A over the straight -2.

My understanding is that it comes with either a strap-on-the-back
power supply or a separate power supply. In my case the
strap-on-the-back version would be preferable but not necessary. If
there is a 12-volt DC version of the strap-on-the-back power supply,
that would also be helpful but not necessary (I plan to run it from a
110-VAC inverter if I have to).

If you have one for sale, please send mail to
with a description of condition, accessories included, and ASKING
PRICE, and I'll do my level best to dig your e-mail out from under the
huge mountain of spam that that mailbox receives every day. But, your
mail still might get lost, so if you don't hear from me in a couple of
days, please try again.

(Maybe someday all of the spammers will be sent to that special corner
of Hell that's reserved for them, and we won't have to go through all
this nonsense...)

The closer you are to New England, the better. If you're in New
England or the mid-Atlantic states as far south as North Carolina and
as far west as Ohio, please let me know where the closest
general-aviation airport is, and let me know whether you can come to
the airport and get me.

Thanks and 73

Rick WA1RKT
New Hampshire

wrote:
OK, per advice from others in this newsgroup, I am beginning my search
for a good Collins KWM-2A.

snip

Rick originally said he wanted SSB plus c.w. capability.
The KWM-2 is a fine SSB transceiver, but it's c.w.
operation is the pits. It keys an audio oscillator
(about 1.5 KHz)into the mic circuits to generate c.w.,
resulting in "artifacts": the (suppressed) carrier,
and a weak keyed c.w. spur 3 KHz below the main
keyed c.w. output. Unless you have perfect-pitch hearing,
it is impossible to zero beat someone on c.w.
using a KWM-2. Also, there is only the 2.1 KHz wide
mechanical filter, no additional c.w. filter provision.

Lack of RIT (receiver incremental tuning) is another
show-stopper on c.w. You must listen to the other
fellow's signal with a 1.5 KHz tone, if you wish
to be near zero beat. Most ops prefer to listen
to a lower pitch, about 700 Hz.

73,
Ed K4PF

Even on phone...that half the band on one switch setting and half on the
other is
extremely inconvenient. Perhaps it did not matter for military/MARS use, but
for the
average ham....the Collins is built nice, but a SB102 does so much
more...and a good TR4 is light years ahead of it!!
....Dave
"Edward Knobloch" wrote in message
...


wrote:
OK, per advice from others in this newsgroup, I am beginning my search
for a good Collins KWM-2A.

snip

Rick originally said he wanted SSB plus c.w. capability.
The KWM-2 is a fine SSB transceiver, but it's c.w.
operation is the pits. It keys an audio oscillator
(about 1.5 KHz)into the mic circuits to generate c.w.,
resulting in "artifacts": the (suppressed) carrier,
and a weak keyed c.w. spur 3 KHz below the main
keyed c.w. output. Unless you have perfect-pitch hearing,
it is impossible to zero beat someone on c.w.
using a KWM-2. Also, there is only the 2.1 KHz wide
mechanical filter, no additional c.w. filter provision.

Lack of RIT (receiver incremental tuning) is another
show-stopper on c.w. You must listen to the other
fellow's signal with a 1.5 KHz tone, if you wish
to be near zero beat. Most ops prefer to listen
to a lower pitch, about 700 Hz.

73,
Ed K4PF

And then there is the direct competitor to the KWM-2(A)... Hallicrafters
wonderful late model SR-400A.... arguably a better receiver... also has
Teflon wire etc... great audio and useful CW and a CW filter. But perhaps
even harder to find then a good KWM-2A.

I have a great example on my web page.... see sig line.

Mike, W9WIS

--
Michael Melland, W9WIS
Winneconne, Wisconsin USA EN54pc
qrp-l #1656 - qrparci # 9875 - iparc #252
ars #1075 - http://webpages.charter.net/w9wis/

On Sun, 07 Sep 2003 15:56:14 GMT, Edward Knobloch
wrote:

Rick originally said he wanted SSB plus c.w. capability.
The KWM-2 is a fine SSB transceiver, but it's c.w.
operation is the pits. It keys an audio oscillator
(about 1.5 KHz)into the mic circuits to generate c.w.,

Now that you mention it, I remember that. That always struck me as
rather lame for a radio that was supposed to be the Cadillac of its
time.

For the purposes of this exercise, SSB is more important to me than
CW, though CW is also a factor ... maybe I should re-think this.

I didn't mention it before (because I didn't think of it) but
reliability is also a factor. Now, I never had any trouble with my
NCX-5 or my HW-101 or SBE-34 or Heath MT-1/MR-1 combo or the Swan I
had (don't remember now which model, might have been the 260 or 270),
but at the time everybody was saying how much more reliable the
Collins was than any of the others.

Rick WA1RKT

... If
there is a 12-volt DC version of the strap-on-the-back power supply,
that would also be helpful but not necessary (I plan to run it from a
110-VAC inverter if I have to).

But your inverter will almost certainly be
solid-state, which defeats the whole purpose
of the all-tube rig!

73, John - K6QQ

On Sun, 7 Sep 2003 19:30:39 -0700, "John Moriarity"
wrote:

... If
there is a 12-volt DC version of the strap-on-the-back power supply,
that would also be helpful but not necessary (I plan to run it from a
110-VAC inverter if I have to).

But your inverter will almost certainly be
solid-state, which defeats the whole purpose
of the all-tube rig!

My hope is that the heavy-duty power components in an inverter will
withstand an EMP better than the signal-level components in a radio.

Of course many modern inverters have low-power control circuits to
control frequency and such, so my analysis probably fails on that
score alone.

I still don't have this all thought out completely, yet.

Rick WA1RKT

On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 15:00:10 GMT, "William Warren"
wrote:

First, fear is a lot easier to create than it is to control.

Good afternoon, Bill.

Thank you for your thoughts. I agree with most of what you say.

FWIW, I am not particularly afraid. I believe that what I think will
happen, will happen, and sooner rather than later. I'm taking some of
what I consider reasonable steps to prepare for it, then I'm moving on
to all the other stuff that needs to be done around here... (like, oh,
say, finding a job for example...)

Rather than being afraid, I guess I was badly numbed by what happened
on 9/11 and I don't expect to recover fully from that numbness any
time soon.

But, perhaps that is just another type of fear ...

Rick WA1RKT

William, do you mind if I cross-post?

I'm extremely impressed with the delivery and style, not to mention the
welcome sanity of the content.

jak

"William Warren" wrote in message
news:_P07b.390522$YN5.257733@sccrnsc01...
wrote in message
...
[snip]
I still don't have this all thought out completely, yet.

Rick WA1RKT

Rick,

In the late Fifties and early Sixties, many residents of the United States
decided to built "fallout shelters" in their homes to protect themselves
and
their loved ones from the affects of nuclear radiation. In preparing for
the
current threat universe, it's best to remember the lessons taught by a
history we are otherwise condemned to repeat.

First, fear is a lot easier to create than it is to control. The
psychological-warfare "experts" who planned and promoted the campaign to
make everyone afraid of the "Red Menace" soon found themselves inside the
tiger they had sought to ride, as the nation had a collective attack of
common sense and abandoned it's "shelters" to the dark corner of our
collective minds which we reserve for the insights we wish we never had.
At
the outset, the builders sought to keep their little rabbit warrens secret
because they'd been told that the unprepared Joes next door would invade
them, and at the end, they sought to keep them secret for fear that Joe
would laugh at their gullibility. Like the realization that our own feces
would quickly overwhelm the holding capacity of any but the most expensive
burrow or the least-accessible cavern, our collective consciousness soon
(or
soon enough) decided to look to a bright future instead of to a desolate
and
unthinkable meagerness.

Second, you can't spend your life being scared. It's a truism of modern
mass
media that what bleeds must lead, and that ** whatever-you-are-afraid-of
**
will be intoned every day during a breathless teaser for the Six O'Clock
News. Such tricks, however, can be turned only on young minds: those not
fully formed or experienced enough to look beyond the carnival barker's
cry.
That is, of course, fine for the Eyewitless News: only young people are
buying what they sell. The barker's cry, however, leaches out through the
co
tton convering the television loudspeaker, and climbs into our collective
world view via a sort of capillary action that poisons the blood of the
nation. Consider carefully the cost of the ride he promotes: survivors of
Stalin's purges; indeed, Solzhenitsyn himself, speak eloquently about the
point they reached where they decided that either death or deliverance was
preferable to the constant pain of hopelessness.

Third, it's more important to have a thousand friends than a thousand
rubbles. Those who survive a nuclear blast, whether inside the concussion
radius or not, will always be those in strong and well connected
communities, not the desperate few holed up in darkness or the dilusional
isolationists who assume that Olfput engines will enable them to prosper
in
a world where there's nowhere to go. It's a matrix of friends that will
see
us through a disaster, not the grid of terrorist greed that seeks a
Stalinist climate in which only steel matters and only cement is solid.

Technical professionals, such as we, must depend on a society where our
skills can be rendered useless by even so minor an event as a power
blackout. As a ham operator, I prepare for emergencies by keeping the
batteries in my HT up to date and a spare tent in the cellar, but I don't
(and with all respect, don't think you should) prepare for a
post-appocalyptic world in which there will be noone to talk to at the
other
end of the dial.

Atlas may, indeed, shrug: having lived both in San Francisco and Saigon, I
can sympathize with the discomfiture he seeks to relieve. Unlike Ayn Rand,
however, I don't choose to order my world with pledges never to depend on
someone else or to predict the destruction of bridges by unthinkable
weapons: even so great a Rand disciple as Allan Greenspan has spoken on
the
corrosive affects of irrational terror. My bridges are of the homemade
variety, across smaller chasms, but no less important than those Dabney
Taggert sought to protect, and they're made of people, not solder.

It's a sunny day outside my window. I'm going to say hello to my neighbor,
and offer to help him wire his house.

FWIW.

Bill

Copyright (C) 2003, William Warren. All Rights Reserved.

(Remove ".nouce" for direct replies.)

On Mon, 8 Sep 2003 17:49:13 UTC, wrote:

On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 15:00:10 GMT, "William Warren"
wrote:

First, fear is a lot easier to create than it is to control.

Good afternoon, Bill.

Thank you for your thoughts. I agree with most of what you say.

FWIW, I am not particularly afraid. I believe that what I think will
happen, will happen, and sooner rather than later. I'm taking some of
what I consider reasonable steps to prepare for it, then I'm moving on
to all the other stuff that needs to be done around here... (like, oh,
say, finding a job for example...)

Rather than being afraid, I guess I was badly numbed by what happened
on 9/11 and I don't expect to recover fully from that numbness any
time soon.

But, perhaps that is just another type of fear ...

Rick WA1RKT


No. The startling thing about 9-11 is that most folk have not
come to grips with it. The general public has put it out of their
mind and believes that the various measures that have been
taken have reduced the risk.

How would you know that? This is one of those risk-ratio things
that doesn't compute easily.

How do you calculate the odds? How can you work through the
scenarios.

While there have been numerous movies about nukes smuggled into the
U.S., "Goldfinger", "the Sum of all Fears", "the Peacemaker", etc.,
I believe that the smuggled nuke in the U.S. scenario is unlikely.

In addition, I doubt that an EMP will occur close enough to take out
my electronics.

The reason to have a tube radio is because there is something
tres-cool about it. I have an old SB-101 and an SB-102, I have
them because these are fun to operate and not because I'll be the
"communicator" in a post-apocalytic "Postman" world.

de ah6gi/4