RadioBanter - View Single Post

October 7th 04, 11:58 PM

PAMNO (N2EY) wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
...

ME built a rig on a wooden base? You jest. Never in this world . . !
Aluminum or steel or forget it.

I've done it...

Point is, it was quick, inexpensive, easy and forgiving of errors

And when it's done it looks just like what it is, a POS.

Yep - Perfectly Ordered System.

.. . . puleeeeze . . . !

As you know I'm more than just a tad
familiar with those old surplus drives. They were designed *seven
decades* ago for use in high altitude high vibration combat
environments.

Which makes them perfect for ham rigs.

Where's the correlation? You operate the Southgate 7 at 25,000 feet
while pulling Gs and getting shot at do ya?

Usually on fixed freqs. None of which has anything to do
with ham gear particularly today's ham gear. They're miserably slow
tuning *kluges* by any realistic measure.

I *like* slow tuning. How fast did you set the dial on the '847 for FD? 5 kHz
per turn?

Since you're the Chief RRAP Tuning Rates guru and you didn't have a
problem with it one way or another during FD you should know right off
what it was. So you tell me. Hmmm? (here comes my second beef sammich
.. . )

Lookit all the "modern" HF rigs - they typically default to a tuning rate of
5-10 kHz/turn. I was doing that in my homebrew rigs 35 years ago.

.. . . . and . . . ?

The best Millen and National could do was a weenie 10:1. Miller came up with
that goofy 6:1/36:1 planetary that cost the earth and felt like mush.

I still have a couple very nice smooth reduction drives out that era
which would great for tuning a little DC rcvr. I wouldn't use 'em for
anything more than a small-bore app like that.

The Heath harmonic gear drives were really slick too.

A good BC-221, ARC-5 or LM cap will do the job better and for a lot less money
and grief. Real gear drive, low torque, nice dial, etc.

Was the S-line a "kluge"? Tuning rate was 20 kHz/turn, IIRC,

Is that a complaint or a compliment?

and took the ham
bands in 200 kHz chunks. Covering 80/40/20/15 took 10 bandswitch positions and
10 xtals. Plus going across certain points on the same band (say, 3590 to 3610
or 7195 to 7205) took a bandswitch move and running the dial almost end to end.

Real Hams have a cure for that. One xtal covers the usual 3.5-3.7
segment for CW contests and other xtal covers the 3.7-3.9 segment for
the phone contests. For the 40 phone contests ya listen with the
75S-3B and transmit with a 32S-3 equipped with a 7.1-7.3 xtal. Then
Drake came out with rigs which tuned 500 wide Khz segemnts per xtal
which completely eliminated the problem.

I'll take my surplus, thank you very much.

Did I ever thank you for getting all my surplus junk outta my life?

Oddly enough, ARC-5 prices keep going up but BC-221/LM prices are down.

Freq meters ain't radios.

OBTW - check out the prices on new rotary optical encoders of decent quality,
if you're thinking about a synthesized design.

Remember that you'll probably need one with a lot of slots/steps on the encoder
disk. For example, if you want to have a tuning rate of 10 kHz turn and want
the steps to be 100 Hz, you need a 100 slot/step-per-rev encoder. If you want
faster tuning rate without sacrificing resolution, you need *more* slots/steps.

I'd simply call yer buddies at Elecraft and pay the $69.13 for a K2
encoder then swipe the circuitry it uses out of their schematics and
have 10 Hz resolution. If I was anal enough I'd pick up an FT-847
shaft encoder instead and get 100 times better resolution than ya gat
out of the K2 display . . "Do not reinvent wheels".

How many junker BC-221s can I buy for the price of one good encoder?

At five bucks a pop you could get 13 of 'em. Imagine: 13 BC-221s all
to yourself James! Orgastic! Could you stand it?

You see what some folks pulled with those licenseless HTs down in Orange
County, FL?

Nope.

Coupla kids stole school HTs (dunno if they were green dot or yellow dot or
FRS/GMRS) and then said they were gonna blow up the school, shoot teachers,
etc. Both were over Len's 14 years of age limit. Both are in really deep stuff.

Sure, transmitting radios don't need licenses or training in proper use....

I'll pass on this one. Might stir up Sweetums again.

Junior year was a trip - 5 engineering courses and working 35-39
hours/week.

That's ugly.

No car, either. Thank you SEPTA....

PRR MU-54s: 14 minutes flat from Aldan to 30th St.

but...but...they're OLD technology!

Rattlers. Not that I had any choice in the matter. I assume that by
now you've caught up with the fact that the PRR went belly up at least
partially as a result of it's antiquated capital investements. Like a
gazillion MU-54s.

Here we go, I'm gonna hold yer feet to the fire on this one Micollis.
I'm gonna show up at your place with a .dxf of a random cross-section
on a CD and you find **all** of it's cross-sectional properties within
120 seconds or you pop for my Newtown Square Ale House wet roast beef
sammich.

All I do is email the problem to you and wait for the results. Then
Microstation does a format conversion....

You SLIME!

Serious spankage, huh?

I didn't say I could solve the problem, just that I could get the results!

I'll buy the RB without a bet.

. . . you got that right . . !

What's the beverage of choice with those sammiches?

Manhattens up with rocks on the side of course.

73 de Jim, N2EY

.....still missing the old Drexel Ale House in the Bond Shopping Center.......

SOB! Major culinary disaster. Mike's on 420 in Springfield near the
trolley station is still in the biz and they're pretty decent.

w3rv