RadioBanter - View Single Post

Dave Heil[_2_] · March 19th 08, 03:51 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated

wrote:
On Mar 16, 6:53 pm, Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
On Mar 16, 3:50� am, Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:

What's funny is that after you've lived in one of those places for
a while, these things tend to seem perfectly rational. When the embassy
water pump broke, we lived for six weeks with a string of locals hiking
the five flights to our flat with a bucket full of water in each hand.
They'd dump the buck in a plastic garbage can, turn around and trot down
the stairs for another couple of buckets. We lived like that for six
weeks--taking bucket baths, doing hand wash and so forth. Keep in mind
that all water used for drinking/cooking had to be boiled and filtered
before use, whether the pumps were in operation or not.

Thank you for your service to our country, Dave. You did that sort of
thing
for how many years, on top of military service?

Sixteen or so, Jim. Whenever one of my Foreign Service colleagues would
gripe about one or another of the African privations, I'd usually add,
"well, at least they aren't shooting at us."

We had a pipe burst inside a wall of our laundry room once. There was
no pipe available in town. Worker dug into the concrete wall, found the
break and used rubber tubing and hose clamps to join the broken pieces.
With every surge of the water pump, the tubing expanded and contracted,
looking like it had a pulse. WAWA--West Africa Wins Again.

bwaahaahaa!

Around here, "WAWA" means something completely different: Popular
convenience stores.

I'm almost afraid to ask for details.

TNX. Not a single new part was used. It's done a good job these past
dozen years.

That's the ultimate in junk box building and a good track record for the
finished project.

Yet some would look down on it as "junk" and "a kludge".

I don't see how that view could be taken. I always had nothing but
admiration for the fellow who homebrewed all or part of his rig.
One of the OT's from Cincinnati had a great station consisting of a
solid-stated National HRO-50 and homebrew SSB transceiver and homebrew
amp. G2FIX's copy of the Collins S-line was some of the most beautiful
homebrew work I've ever seen. I have photos of it somewhere on the web.
If you Google "G2FIX" you may find it on the site of an ex-G living in
5-land.

IIRC, the HQ-215 lamps aren't *inside* the dial drum, are
they?
Yes, it is. There's only one inside the drum and another for the
S-meter. To the left of the dial window is a calibration adjustment.
To the right is an identical knob which dims the dial lamps if desired.
I desire it a lot since dimming them a bit keeps from having to put in
new lamps very often.

Perhaps the Type 8 will have a dimmer pot.....

Heh. Pick a resistor and solder it in.

I received the data from Engineering.
Good. Ms. Yardley sends greetings.
Heh.

As Richard Thompson says:

"Red hair and black leather, my favorite colour scheme..."

It's all about the curls....

I love it!

I've read the eham thread and have even participated.
Excellent!

I don't know if it is or not. There's been some anger exhibited over
some issues. Quite a bit of erroneous information has been passed.

No matter; the important thing is that knowledgeable folks have
presented valid data.

Tom Rauch W8JI has presented quite a bit of excellent data. He's been
designing linear amps for several companies for quite a number of years.
He once helped me troubleshoot I was having with a burned up plate choke
in an AL-1200 Ameritron amp via telephone from 5,000 miles away.

I agree. Those articles and notes often go far beyond mere
specifications and general data, too. They often explain *why*
something is done, not just what to do.

Exactly. I'd never realized until I got the binder that Eimac had even
published amateur linear amplifier "how to" articles. A linear amp
isn't a difficult thing to design yourself if you understand why a final
tank Q within a paricular range is desired and you can use tables
published by Orr for translating the plate load impedence of a
particular bottle (run at a particular plate voltage) to find the values
of C1, C2 and L needed for the tank circuit.

I found "The Care And Feeding of Power Tetrodes" free for the
download,
along with lots more Eimac stuff at the BAMA mirror site.

There's lots of good material there.

They also have quite a few of the GE Ham News periodicals scanned.

I found those. I think that's where I found a pdf of the vintage
Hammarlund clock face. I bought a nice looking HQ-180 a few years back
from the newspaper classifieds. It never had a clock installed. I
printed the clock face from the pdf and bought an inexpensive 24 hour
battery powered movement with appropriate hands from some web site.
Of course it won't turn the rig on as the original clock, but those
movements are pretty hard to find these days.

There is a great difference between a receiving-type
tube run at relatively low voltages and a high power transmitting tube
run at high voltages. Their construction is quite different.

Until relatively recently, oxide-coated cathodes could not withstand
high plate voltages,
so tubemakers continued to use thoriated-tungsten filaments for
transmitting tubes
beyond 100-200 W or so. Tube size is another factor; a 3-500Z can
handle more than
ten times the watts of a 6146 but is not ten times the size, so other
methods have
to be employed.

Yep, and unlike 6146's, those bottles will show red when run within
their designed ratings.

Or that, in the case of high-gain glass tetrodes like
the 4-125A, running lightly loaded can cause the glass of the tube to
soften from electron bombardment.

That sort of thing was also evident in TV horizontal output tubes. As I
pointed out in the e-ham forum, Nonex glass was used in some later sweep
tubes to help in preventing suck-in.

I think the horizontal output suck-in problem was simply caused by
excessive heat
from the plate, in a poorly-ventilated TV.

I think a Doug DeMaw amplifier article (later reprinted in the Handbook)
showed how the same problem could crop up in a sweep tube amplifier.

What is described by Eimac in "Care And Feeding" was the glass being
softened
by electron bombardment of the glass, caused by running the tube
lightly loaded (low
plate current).

Right. I don't think anyone could argue that Eimac knew power bottles
inside and out.

Having the parts to keep something running isn't the
problem. Storage is.

I could tell ya stories about *storage*....

The radio overflow here is in a 16x30 foot Amish barn we had built. It
isn't inconvenient unless it is snowing or, like today, raining heavily.

I've read articles stating that NASA is having real problem as those
with knowledge of the design of such engines are retiring or have
already retired.

Or are dead. Consider that someone who was, say, 40 years old in 1964
and working on the Apollo project would be 84 today.

Dead works too.

What I might have considered is that
newer composite decking material which is designed to last for decades.

The composite deck material is great stuff but it's softer than
Corian, and
I didn't have any. Plus I don't think it comes in white. (Note to self
- raid
relative's basement for the rest of the Corian before they decide to
toss it.)

I don't think I've seen the composite decking in white and yes, grab the
Corian scraps.

I'm not familiar with the term "balloon framing". I'm looking it up. I
don't think there's anything available from my local lumberyard in
lengths exceeding 16'.

We used to be able to get up to 20 foot 2x4s but you paid a premium
per
foot and the quality wasn't as good.

Yeah, I recall early handbook articles about 20 foot California Redwood
1x2's or 2x4's. Here in the East, I never saw any of that stuff in
lumberyards.

We call them "McMansions" in these parts.

There are some of 'em in Wheeling, but not many. I think those homes
were the product of a booming economy and easy credit. Those days are
over for at least the time being.

Yes, that's exactly what caused them. Some folks are left holding the
bag.

Well, I consider that a bag of their own making. They tried to buy more
house than they were really able to afford and they opted for those
variable-rate loans. They seemed to have forgotten that the rates could
go up as well as down.

It is not unusual around here to see a perfectly good house from the
1950s to 1970s bought and torn down by a developer so a McMansion can
be built. The value is in the land - often the price of the new place
is twice that of the old. The current housing bust has mostly put an
end to that, but not completely. More than a few locals are up in arms
because it means less "affordable" housing units.

I can't really understand the "up in arms" part because we really having
a surplus of existing housing in the country.

What they're up in arms about is that houses in the $300,000 -
$500,000
range are being replaced by houses worth double that or more, on the
same lots. That drastically reduces the number of people who can
afford
to even think about buying them. During a downturn those houses become
unsellable.

I'm used to living in an area where there aren't enough people to buy up
the houses which are already available. At the same time, more new
houses are being built.

On top of that, they tend to increase the impervious surface
percentage of
the lot, so there's more stormwater runoff when it rains. Which floods
the
folks downhill, who were never flooded before, and increases erosion
issues.

I can see that as a legitimate gripe.

The amateur radio connection to all of this is that often the house
which was torn down had mature trees good for antennas and no CC&Rs.
"Development" often removes at least some of the trees, or they don't
survive the construction process, and the new place is usually CC&R'd
to the max.

That IS a problem for radio amateurs. � I think a bigger problem is th
at
most of our newer housing is built in subdivisions. Those subdivisions
are not radio friendly at all. I'm seeing more and more magazine
articles on stealth antennas. I won't consider living in one of those
areas.

I hope and pray I will never have to consider living in one of those
places, but
as time goes on and more old houses are torn down and replaced by
radio-unfriendly CC&R'd places, the options decrease.

That's too bad. That's perhaps one of the reasons why I don't want to
live too near a larger city.

We're sitting on an acre. If we re-locate, I'd be happier with 2 or 3
acres. I wouldn't object if half of that area happened to be in trees
or woods though.

I've seen the pix; I hope for such a location someday. Non-radio
factors keep me on my little patch of Radnor Township.

I think we've been spoiled by living out here. It is incredibly
quiet--especially in the evenings/nights. The radio quiet is
phenomenal. The dark skies make for some really great astronomical views.

The "how houses are built" part is what I meant to address. Things like
a geothermal heating/cooling systems are another factor. W8RHM's new
place has one and it is a large house. His heating and cooling bills
are quite reasonable.

Because he's not really paying for heating or cooling; he's paying to
run pumps.
A few of the locals here have gone to geothermal; it works. The main
problem
is the first cost.

I think the things typically run about $10k or so additional over the
cost of a new house with conventional heat.

Beautiful, just beautiful..

If not beautiful, at least it isn't ugly.

Beauty in both form and function.

It's nice when you can combine the two.

The console and the former
W8YX desk got hauled to each of my Foreign Service postings. The
console is approaching thirty years in age. It gets a new coat of paint
about once per decade.

What is this "paint" of which you speak?

You never use paint?

One difference is that your console/desk is purpose-built for the
shack. Custom use, IOW. The op desk I use was designed to be multi-
purpose, and has been on several Field Days, as have the Southgate
rigs.

N8NN and I have been using those plastic-topped banquet tables with the
folding legs inside a screen room for FD use. That's because 1) they're
easy to set up and take down and 2) Bert has some.

I have considered those. If they will fit flat in the current vehicle
they have
possibilities. And again they are multi-use; they won't just be for
FD.

They make fine picnic tables, seating for additional dinner guests,
craft tables and garage sale tables.

It is really difficult to buy something which is really ideal for an
amateur radio operating position. Computer hutches/desks tend to be a
little on the small side and aren't generally as stoutly built as
necessary. For some of us, what worked really well at one point might
not be as handy years later, when the amount of gear expands to fill all
available space. � I used to get by with the old W8YX desk with a 3x5'
top. The position I now use is 3x7'. If I relocate, I'll consider a
homebrew U-shaped operating position. The room I'm in at present does
not lend itself to that.

I don't think anything off-the-shelf is really suited for more than a
very small
ham shack. One problem is depth; the equipment needs to sit pretty far
from the op
but the usual 24-30 inch table or computer desk isn't deep enough.

Yep. I consider 36" to be a minimum.

It really is time for new shack/shop furniture for me. The Southgate
Radio team is
on it....

Check out PAINT this time. It keeps the grime from getting into the
wood fibers.

Dave K8MN