On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 01:03:55 GMT, "Dave" wrote:

|Hi all,
|
|I just found several 829B tubes - believe it or not in my garage - I
|must have got them in a box of stuff at a ham fest at one time.
|A check on Ebay shows they're pretty much worthless for the sake
|of dollars, but they're so COOL! With the two plate caps that are
|actually just stiff pins, they look like little Martians.
|
|I put a pair on my office credenza just to look geeky cool. Fresh
|out of the box as NOS they look amazing - just like they were made
|yesterday. It's a pity they have no value - maybe as a homebrew
|project??
|
|So can someone tell me what they would have been used for?
|Something tells me they're a VHF power tube.
|
|Any application as a one-tube QRP rig of any sort? Any stories
|about using them in the past? I've built a lot of little rigs over the
|years, but never knew about the 829

I used one on two meters in the early 60's. The amp was of course
push-pull and had a tuned line plate circuit with link coupling. I
ran AM and CW and used the modulated high voltage out of my Heathkit
DX-100 for plate and screen voltage.

The original exciter was a converted SCR-522, which used the 829's
baby brother, the 832 as frequency multipliers and final. Later I
replaced the 829 with a 5894 and the 832s with a baby version of the
'94, whose part number escapes me at the moment (6907 I think).

These later tubes were more efficient at vhf and were tetrodes rather
than the 832-829 "beam-power" tubes. The 832 was sort of like a pair
of 2E26s sharing a cathode and the 829 was sort of like a pair of
807s.

Eventually, I replaced the clunky '522 with a more compact exciter out
of the Handbook that used somethin' or the other as
oscillator/doubler/tripler and a 6360 tripler driving another 6360.

Real progress came when I converted the second 6360 to a high level
mixer driven with a Central Electronics 10A SSB exciter. (I don't even
want to think what the IMD out of this mess must have been.)