Ralph W4ZO came over this afternoon with my Viking transmitter
in the trunk of his Crown Vic.
After some adjusting of the contacts on the Dow-Key relay
it's on the air.
You can see a photo of the AM station here,
http://radioheaven.homestead.com/AMstation.html

It's sitting on the right hand side of my big green chair.
The rest of the ham shack is on the left side.

If 75 meters gets a little less noisy maybe I find make some
QSOs.

3.885, really 3.88456 according to the freq counter.

73, Ron

Every time I see one of those I think back to the time I built one
from a kit. Was still in high school. I was so proud of that
transmitter. Used crystals initially before I modified an ARC-5
transmitter as a VFO. Of course those days are gone forever, but
there is nothing to compare them to these days.

Dick - W6CCD

On Fri, 17 Aug 2007 09:05:46 -0400, Ron in Radio Heaven
wrote:

Ralph W4ZO came over this afternoon with my Viking transmitter
in the trunk of his Crown Vic.
After some adjusting of the contacts on the Dow-Key relay
it's on the air.
You can see a photo of the AM station here,
http://radioheaven.homestead.com/AMstation.html

It's sitting on the right hand side of my big green chair.
The rest of the ham shack is on the left side.

If 75 meters gets a little less noisy maybe I find make some
QSOs.

3.885, really 3.88456 according to the freq counter.

73, Ron


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

"Dick" wrote in message
...
Every time I see one of those I think back to the time I built one
from a kit. Was still in high school. I was so proud of that
transmitter. Used crystals initially before I modified an ARC-5
transmitter as a VFO. Of course those days are gone forever, but
there is nothing to compare them to these days.

Dick - W6CCD

Of course there is! Only better!

Google "PicaStar".

W4ZCB

On Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:31:17 GMT, "Harold E. Johnson"
wrote:


"Dick" wrote in message
.. .
Every time I see one of those I think back to the time I built one
from a kit. Was still in high school. I was so proud of that
transmitter. Used crystals initially before I modified an ARC-5
transmitter as a VFO. Of course those days are gone forever, but
there is nothing to compare them to these days.

Dick - W6CCD

Of course there is! Only better!

Google "PicaStar".

W4ZCB


Not really. Back in those days it was somewhat of a miracle to get
things running and operating correctly. You felt a real sense of
accomplishment to get a station running well. Now you just go to the
store, buy a radio and plug it in. I suppose in some people's views
that is better.

Dick - W6CCD

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Dick wrote:


Not really. Back in those days it was somewhat of a miracle to get
things running and operating correctly. You felt a real sense of
accomplishment to get a station running well. Now you just go to the
store, buy a radio and plug it in. I suppose in some people's views
that is better.

Considering the "caliber" of some "operators" - it not only may be
better - it may be the only way some "get on the air"...

Often then, many others wish they hadn't.

just my .02...
--
randy guttery

A Tender Tale - a page dedicated to those Ships and Crews
so vital to the United States Silent Service:
http://tendertale.com

Dick wrote:

SNIPPED


Not really. Back in those days it was somewhat of a miracle to get
things running and operating correctly. You felt a real sense of
accomplishment to get a station running well. Now you just go to the
store, buy a radio and plug it in. I suppose in some people's views
that is better.

Dick - W6CCD


It is still possible to get 'that ole feeling' ... !!

Yep! It really is possible!

This past spring I bought a cosmetically very good set of 'nostalgia' equipment
using eBay. I bought an HQ-145, DX-40, Drake LP filter, D-104 microphone, a
DOW-KEY SPDT relay with auxiliary contacts, a great condition Vibroplex and a
VF-1. [This stuff dates to about 10 years into ham radio [~1965] for me].

It took almost three months of electronic restoration to get everything
operating to specifications. The first night I made a CW contact on 40 meters
brought back memories of my share in the olden golden days. The next night I
entered an AM QSO on 75 meters [a little tough with 40 watts]. Ah! the feeling!!

Now the 'bad' news ...

Due to age of switches and recurring oxidation on the contacts, the receiver
needs routine attention for the switched circuits. But, it is different to turn
on the station and HAVE to WAIT for a minute or so before I can hear anything.

The most difficult restoration was the threads of the DOW-KEY relay. Oxidation
swelled the threaded surface and had to be removed [jeweler's rouge & tooth brush].

Yep! I also have a few store bought ICOMS for HF, three in fact. It is
absolutely amazing what can be packaged in 1/2 a shoe box! The NOSTALGIA station
weighs 50+ pounds and takes one full bench. My three ICOMS together don't weigh
1/2 that much, all fit on one bench with room to spare, and they operate NOW ...
no waiting :-)

For those who would like to relive 'that ole feeling' I recommend reassembling a
NOSTALGIA STATION.

/s/ DD, W1MCE

"Deek" wrote in message
...
Dick wrote:


For those who would like to relive 'that ole feeling' I recommend
reassembling a NOSTALGIA STATION.

/s/ DD, W1MCE


My "nostalgia station" will be a MicaMold CW transmitter or my old Globe
Scout
40A with a VF-1 VFO. The more basic beginner ham receivers awaiting
restoration
are a Hallicrafters S-53 and a S-20R. So many projects, so little time!
But, I am looking forward to some fun CW contacts with those old rigs!

Pete

Ron in Radio Heaven wrote:
Ralph W4ZO came over this afternoon with my Viking transmitter
in the trunk of his Crown Vic.
After some adjusting of the contacts on the Dow-Key relay
it's on the air.
You can see a photo of the AM station here,
http://radioheaven.homestead.com/AMstation.html

It's sitting on the right hand side of my big green chair.
The rest of the ham shack is on the left side.

If 75 meters gets a little less noisy maybe I find make some
QSOs.

3.885, really 3.88456 according to the freq counter.

73, Ron

What a coincidence... my first receiver was a National NC-183 (didn't have
bandspread calibration for 15m). And, in high school, the club station
(WA7NUA) used a Viking II transmitter.
73,
Bryan WA7PRC

Well folks, since I have been licensed since '56 I know all about those old
rigs. As it is, I do not own, nor will I buy any modern equipment, even
today. I have mostly all Drake gear, and a set of Kenwood twins. It is the
later version (T599D and R599D), but they still have three tubes in them. I
can still remember my first transmitter that was my Christmas present in
Dec. of '56. A brand new Heath DX-35. I used a 1937 Hallicrafters SX-11
that cost me $15.00. I had done WAS with only three crystals by the time I
graduated HS in '57 and joined the Navy. I still like the wait for the rigs
to warm up, keeps the shack warm in the winter and has that great smell of
burning dust off the tubes from time to time. We didn't even know what SWR
was, and had no way to measure it if we did. Use the handbook for your
measurements, cut the wire and build and antenna. If I remember right, I
even used RG-11U for a feed line, not knowing any better.

Yeah, keep 'em glowing... Plug-N-Play is not for me!


73 to all
Mike/K5VSE


--
Formerly WB6VSE, Senior Tech. Amateur Division
SBE/Linear Systems, Watsonville, CA
Pupule384 On 3922 Nightly
WEB Site: http://members.tripod.com/~sjsharks/index.html
Restoring and using Drake Radios, TR-4, TR-4C, RV-4C,
Drake Twins: "C" line, W-4 Wattmeter, L4-B amplifier
APA 220, USS Okanogan, LSD31, USS Point Defiance
All email scanned with Norton 2007
"In God We Trust"

Changing the subject but stayin in the thread... (see below)

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007, Mena Mike wrote:

Well folks, since I have been licensed since '56 I know all about those old
rigs. As it is, I do not own, nor will I buy any modern equipment, even
today. I have mostly all Drake gear, and a set of Kenwood twins. It is the
later version (T599D and R599D), but they still have three tubes in them. I
can still remember my first transmitter that was my Christmas present in
Dec. of '56. A brand new Heath DX-35. I used a 1937 Hallicrafters SX-11
that cost me $15.00. I had done WAS with only three crystals by the time I
graduated HS in '57 and joined the Navy. I still like the wait for the rigs
to warm up, keeps the shack warm in the winter and has that great smell of
burning dust off the tubes from time to time. We didn't even know what SWR
was, and had no way to measure it if we did. Use the handbook for your
measurements, cut the wire and build and antenna. If I remember right, I
even used RG-11U for a feed line, not knowing any better.

Yeah, keep 'em glowing... Plug-N-Play is not for me!

As I recently became retired my interests have evolved towards building
homebrew tube gear. Reasons: i) simplicity in circuitry, ii) comparatively
large tubes & sockets make soldering easier, iii) accidental slip of the
test prod might not kill a tube but might a transistor, iv) yeah, I like
to see those filaments glow, too, v) can still get those tubes but some
transistors you can't find anywhere, v) throw-away technology (boards) is
bad ecology...give me discrete devices any day, and vi) with high power
heat sinks, silicon compound for conduction of heat (if it gets on your
fingers, its hard to get it off) is needed and that damned metal can
getdamned hot.

I've been building a tube SSB transmitter for about 1-2 years now (parts
of it can be seen at http://www.panix.com/~asd) and ends up with a pair of
813s in grounded-grid, driven by a single 811a in G-G, lots of home brew
antenna tuners, and Icom 707 for the moment SSB transciever.

The homebrew SSB exciter lineup is not yet pictured, but at its current
stage of construction is almost ready to go on the air. Generate DSB at 2
mHz with 6AL5 balanced modulator, upconvert by mixing with 7 mHz to 9 mHz
(6BE6), use McCoy 9 mHz crystal filter (somebody gave it to me 25 years
ago) to shave off the desired sideband, mix (6SA7) with 5 mHz local
oscilator (by doubled 2.5 mHz from old war surplus Collins 70H3 VFO [from
Fair Radio Sales when they had them, they ran out years ago]) to get 4 mHz
(75 meters, my favorite ragchew band) which the scope shows to be about
5-10 mv, and goes into two 6C4s (triodes, grounded cathode) and then into
a 6AG7 & 6146. I am at the point where I need to make a RF transformer
to take the output of the 6146 to drive two more 6146s in parallel to get
the ten watts I need to drive the G-G 811a. Yes, if I could optimize
everything better, I could use less tubes. But, I preferred to make
modules (lots of stages are built inside of old computer power supply
cabinets (they are about 6x6x4 or so, and nice to work with, cheap at
hamfests at $1 each or so). All the gear is full of those old D'arsonval
"Frankenstein"-type (real) meters (not this LED crap), so I can
keep monitoring practically all the voltages on anything. Its not very
pretty to look at, but its a whole lot easier to work on than any of that
new gear out that surely has thousands of transistors and hundreds of
chips (?).

I chose the 813s and 811 and GG amps because both the 813 and 811 don't
really need cooling fans (I hate blower/fan noises) and grounded-grid amps
are notoriously stable (no neutralization headaches), and they are pretty
cheap. I have several 813s, some made in China; one of the Chinese 813s
had a filament that opened up on me all by itself after very little use
(don't know if that is THEIR quality control or just a statistical fluke,
but I thought I'd pass that along to y'all). I also manage filament warmup
and cooldown on the 813s with a variac (up and down over abut 5-10
seconds), but not on the 811 amp. Been using the 813s + 811 for over a
year (using the Icom 707 as driver) and just love how nice and quiet it is
without fans/blower noise.

Almost all of my old rigs are also pictured on that URL, and a couple of
pictures of my "secret lab" out in the garage (heated with a space heater
in the winter, cooled with a small airconditioner in the summer).

I started as a novice in 1959. Had a Knight kit T-50 and Knight R-100
receiver, later got a DX-40. Mostly liked to ragchew with locals on ten
meters AM at the time. Lots of find memories. Lots of SWLing.

I'd like to hear from other homebrewers, HFers, ragchewers and learn if
ther are any 75 meter nets for homebrewers/tubers/etc. I look at all this
new gear coming out (for thousands of dollars) with hundreds of buttons,
knobs, and "thangs" on them, and big thick manuals you have to read to
figure out how to push the buttons (once, press twice, press and hold?,
press and hold one, then turn on the power switch? Etc? Secret "reboot"
buttons hidden somewhere. Built in DRM, DCMA, spyware? Too?). What
happened to old-fashioned skill? 50 years ago guys worked the world with a
crystal and a single 6L6 and straight key. Now, they are all couch
potatoes in front of a black box that looks like its from outer space. ;-)

I figure I'm within a week or two of getting the homebrew SSB exciter
actually on the air. I've been testing the outputs of various stages
either using the Icom 707 as general coverage receiver, one or two
oscilloscopes to check generated signals, etc. Still have a lot of
tweaking to do. Its been a ton of work, debugging and rebuilding when
something doesn't work, but its also been an incomparable sense of
accomplishment, too, when I get a stage to work and make progress (four
steps forward, three steps backwards). Its also nice to have some test
equipment (generators, meters, a good oscilloscope [had a Tektronix 922
that gave up and I tossed, then a heathkit which had a dead vertical amp
that I fixed, and a BK-1420? very nice but now the horizontal sweep died
but vertical amp still good, so I can probe at least for RF which gives me
a vertical line [keeping the test equipment going is also a problem], and
all of that stuff is also 30+ years old).

After that, I plan to build a tube receiver and maybe even build a crystal
lattice filter, and try to build a stable VFO.

Art, W4PON
Member, QCWA
~99.9% of my time with soldering iron & screwdriver, 0.1% of my time in
ragchewing.



73 to all
Mike/K5VSE


--
Formerly WB6VSE, Senior Tech. Amateur Division
SBE/Linear Systems, Watsonville, CA
Pupule384 On 3922 Nightly
WEB Site: http://members.tripod.com/~sjsharks/index.html
Restoring and using Drake Radios, TR-4, TR-4C, RV-4C,
Drake Twins: "C" line, W-4 Wattmeter, L4-B amplifier
APA 220, USS Okanogan, LSD31, USS Point Defiance
All email scanned with Norton 2007
"In God We Trust"