RadioBanter - View Single Post

October 8th 04, 04:20 AM

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
...
In article ,

(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
...

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?

They're solid, all-gears, and no slip and no backlash. Lube 'em up right and
they're very low torque, too.

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
. . )

10 kHz per turn.

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 . . . ?

I wuz decades ahead of the curve. Nowadays, almost *every* rig allows you to do
5-10 kHz/turn. 35 years ago, only the Southgate Type 3 and a very few by other
manufacturers did.

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.

Nor would I.

The Heath harmonic gear drives were really slick too.

What were they used in? You don't mean the SB series or the HW-100 or 101.

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?

A little of both

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.

Right. You spend big bucks for an S-line, and the first step is to spend even
more to replace three of the stock xtals. Of course they weren't expensive
compared to the S line itself.

Then
Drake came out with rigs which tuned 500 wide Khz segemnts per xtal
which completely eliminated the problem.

Drake and Heath and everybody else...

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

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

Not yet...

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

Freq meters ain't radios.

True.

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.

You also have to write the code for the controller.

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".

Gotta do more than the encoder.

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?

Heck, I'll build a whole receiver for that. With a little help from the stock
room...

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.

So?

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.

They were pretty much gone by the 1970s.

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.

Not really.

PRR was victim of three things:

1) Overregulation by the Feds. Fixed by the Staggers Act of 1980.

2) The interstate highway system

3) A merger with the N&W was refused, but a merger with the New York Central
happened. N&W and PRR were similar operations serving different markets; such a
merger would probably have succeeded. PRR/NYC were competitors who could not
have been much more different; their merger was a complete mess from the getgo.

Oddly enough, most of what used to be the PRR is now part of the Norfolk
Southern, which is the direct descendant of the N&W. And most of what used to
be the NYC is now part of CSX.

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.

I'm droolin...

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.

I know the place. We gotta go...

73 de Jim, N2EY