RadioBanter - FA: Collins 51J4 (Last 10 hours!)

(see quoted material at end)

Years ago I could not understand very well how people would spend large
amounts of money and time on old cars (eg. Ford Model T, etc). Now that I
am older myself, I can better appreciate the nostalgia value of such
pursuits. There are lots of pursuits out there that have novel and
priceless value to the pursuers. Birdwatchers, for example, have been
described as fanatics.

In recent years I have sought, and obtained, great pleasure working on
that old "obsolete" tube gear and that includes building gear from junk,
spare parts, etc., out of the junk box. For many, who could not afford
this stuff as a kid but always wanted it, now maybe they can afford it
even if they don't fix the stuff. So, as this stuff becomes an "antique"
there will be a progressively smaller fraction of the population that will
pay what seem to be progressively more outrageous prices.

That old tube gear, however, wasn't all that bad, especially for HF
frequencies, and beyond that new solid-state gear, it is much more
repairable (because they were built of discrete devices instead of chips,
some of which are no longer available, and the circuitry was before
today's scale of ultracomplexity and ultracompactness). You generally
don't need fancy equipment to fix the stuff.

Yes, eBay (etc), is the great attractor and auctions play on our
psychological weakness that our "wants" force us into bidding wars to
satisfy our wants; I've looked for a few old boatanchors myself and see
what is essentially junk (with many statements of "as is", "the tubes
light up, that's it" or "I have used the rig") and you wonder if its
salvageable to functionality or you can only "talk about owning an X"
rather than using it, and the "fixer-upper" status means that after you
paid an outrageous sum of money for it, then you have to spend an
outrageous sum of time and effort to restore it and that may also mean
more money yet). Then there was the guy who said "I hooked a wire to the
receiver and heard 18 stations" as if that tells me much besides its not
dead. Me, after spending an outrageous amount of time on eBay, and getting
snotty, arrogant answers to questions and inadequate answers to questions)
I'm going to be going to more hamfests and actually look at, lift up the
lid, talk to the guy (for history and price), evaluate the whole thing on
the spot, and then arrange my own transportation (the back seat of my car)
back home so at least for that part of the trip I know what is going on.

Another thing: I'm going to crack that ARRL handbook and that Bill Orr
handbook for receiver circuits and just build my own.

I see all these fancy rigs with two VFOs, readouts, multiple digital
meters, scopes, TV screens, a couple hundred knobs and buttons and you
sometimes can't run them without reading the manual [if its readible].
To me, it's not real ham radio. Its an "appliance operator" hobby. I
can take just about any receiver or transmitter made before they got
complicated and figure out how to adjust all the knobs and switches to
receive stations, and talk to them, just by reading the label on the knob.
What is going on, functionally, is much easier to decipher if you look at
the schematic. I like all of that.

$1000 for a 75 series (or similar vintage) Collins rig? Yes, I've seen
them at hamfests with that price on them. I saw a Hallicrafters SX-88
(very rare) receiver get a written bid of $5,000 in a silent auction at
one hamfest. Nice for rich guys or guys who don't know what else to do
with their money. But, spending a bunch of money on such an item is, to me,
also not ham radio. Oh, yes, I've had a lot of those solid state rigs,
too, when I was younger. These days, I'm having much more fun with the old
tube gear, both restoring (a little) and building (a lot).

To each his own.

Licensed ham, since Novice days in 1960.

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On Fri, 30 Dec 2005, John, N9JG wrote:

$1000 for a ? 50 year old receiver!

"Dan Robinson" wrote in message
...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=5844995585