On Fri, 24 Aug 2007, geek wrote:

On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 23:51:36 -0400, Straydog wrote:



On Fri, 24 Aug 2007, George McLeod wrote:

It is great to know that I am not the last dinosaur left on the planet.

Jeeze, what is it, you and me against the world? ;-)

Oh, there's more of us :-)

At 39, I'm a dinosaur at heart with barely a transistor in stock. A couple
thousand tubes though!

Three of us? Could we form a club? "The dinosaur club"? ;-)

I'm kinda half serious, though. I go through QST and they have this "Old
Radio" department now. But its also almost all old _commercial_ gear.

I'm looking for those guys who built all those rigs that appeared in QSTs,
CQs, etc. If they are still alive.

I've got probably 100+ myself. Constantly looking at my tube manual and
dreaming about the next project(s), whether I should use some tube or a
different one, or maybe even something else.

I started out with mostly 7 pin and 9 pin miniatures, but now I'm pushing
myself towards octals just for the ease of handling. The "key" means its
very easy to get into the socket (get key in hole, rotate and
...click..push in). Besides, the socket pins are bigger, easier to solder.
And, since the heat is spread out more, the tube runs cooler so you don't
burn yourself when you go to pull out a hot tube to check another of the
same kind. Takes up more volume, but, what the hey, I build this stuff
spread out for ease of repair, ease of construction, modification.

Cheers,
__
Gregg