In article ,
D Peter Maus wrote:

I remember, after several months playing with my S-53A, tuning
through a ham band, hearing that duck quack that could only be SSB
without a BFO, and pulling up the toggle marked 'CW.' Slowly tuning
across the band--actually, I was looking for CW on the lower end--I
heard one of the ducks become intelligible for an instant.

That got my attention.

I went back and tried to duplicate that moment by tuning very slowly
through any of duck quacking I could find. And I did succeed, on the
80 meter band, in receiving SSB, with the CW BFO. Working my way
through the HF spectra, I succeeded in other bands as well. I was
about at 40 meters when my grandfather walked to the door.

"Do you know what you've done, here?"

I didn't have a clue.

So, he explained it to me. But I was convinced that given the CW
offset of the BFO, that I would only be able to receive LSB. USB
would be outside the passband.

Um...not so much.

The BFO had been zero beat tuned with incoming carriers by previous
owners. Which meant I could pull both USB and LSB through the
relatively narrow IF (though wide by comparison to today's sets.)

It was one of the most exciting discoveries I'd made in my limited
radio experience back then.

The next time I was at my grandfather's house, he took me down to
his radio room and let me play with his big boy toys. The Hammarlund
(which I have now,) a pair of RME's, and an FM tuner by
Hallicrafters.

I've rarely had that much fun with radio. Especially getting to
swing that big-ass tri bander around in the back yard.

Things accelerated pretty quickly from there. And got out of control
right away.



Anyone have similar moments of discovery/revelation?

That's the way single side band detection works Peter. You have to mix
a local carrier (the BFO) with the SSB signal so the detector can
demodulate it. For SSB mode in most receivers the BFO is fixed (on less
expensive radios it is the clarifier) and the detector is set to look
at the selected side band but in the older radios you can (as you found
out) use the AM envelope detector as well. This usually works just fine
on the older radios as long as the hams using the band stick to using
one side band.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

Telamon wrote:
In article ,
D Peter Maus wrote:

I remember, after several months playing with my S-53A, tuning
through a ham band, hearing that duck quack that could only be SSB
without a BFO, and pulling up the toggle marked 'CW.' Slowly tuning
across the band--actually, I was looking for CW on the lower end--I
heard one of the ducks become intelligible for an instant.

That got my attention.

I went back and tried to duplicate that moment by tuning very slowly
through any of duck quacking I could find. And I did succeed, on the
80 meter band, in receiving SSB, with the CW BFO. Working my way
through the HF spectra, I succeeded in other bands as well. I was
about at 40 meters when my grandfather walked to the door.

"Do you know what you've done, here?"

I didn't have a clue.

So, he explained it to me. But I was convinced that given the CW
offset of the BFO, that I would only be able to receive LSB. USB
would be outside the passband.

Um...not so much.

The BFO had been zero beat tuned with incoming carriers by previous
owners. Which meant I could pull both USB and LSB through the
relatively narrow IF (though wide by comparison to today's sets.)

It was one of the most exciting discoveries I'd made in my limited
radio experience back then.

The next time I was at my grandfather's house, he took me down to
his radio room and let me play with his big boy toys. The Hammarlund
(which I have now,) a pair of RME's, and an FM tuner by
Hallicrafters.

I've rarely had that much fun with radio. Especially getting to
swing that big-ass tri bander around in the back yard.

Things accelerated pretty quickly from there. And got out of control
right away.



Anyone have similar moments of discovery/revelation?

That's the way single side band detection works Peter.


I understand that. That's not my point. The switch was marked CW. And
it was fixed, and supposed to have been offset. So when the incoming was
centered in the passband, a 1khz tone was heard. Putting one sideband
always out of the passband. In this case, the upper.

By having the BFO tuned to zero beat when the phantom carrier was in
the center of the passband, I could then receive both sidebands as
necessary.

Primitive. And it worked.

When my grandfather showed me what I'd actually done, and we did the
math, it was pretty clear.

And keep in mind this was in the very early days, for me. I'd just
stepped out of my first crystal sets into this Halli. So this was
exciting stuff.

So, my question....anyone else had similary exciting revelations
during the early days?

D Peter Maus wrote:

snip

So, my question....anyone else had similary exciting revelations
during the early days?


Not so much revelations as excitement of discovery:

1. an ongoing search for detector minerals such as galena ore from
rock shops; one sample mounted in a pipe and tuned with a hat pin
produced loud audio in a speaker connected through a hi-Z transformer
-- the front end was a 365 pf air variable in parallel with a
handwound coil and the antenna was a longwire draped around the
room.

2. a QRP QSO on CB channel 7 using a Knight-Kit superregen walkie-talkie
(perhaps 50 mw power input) between my MN QTH and TN.

3. VHF TV summertime skip -- we were 70 miles from the metro stations,
so had a 50 ft. tilt-over tower with a log-periodic on a rotator
(not a color version either), and the most fun was finding a clear
signal from halfway across the continent, often the southeast
(FL, GA usually). I still have dreams in which I am watching
a strange program from some distant market. I wonder what ATSC
skip will be like I suppose the next challenge will be grabbing
low power translator analog TV DX until that disappears too.

4. Handling net traffic during the Alaskan earthquake (as a kid that was
a solemn privilege).

5. Detecting emissions from Jupiter during a noise peak in the 60's
using some primitive gear on six meters.

6. Working Easter Island on six meters with about 50W power input.

7. Sounds of unknown utility transmissions burned into my brain, no
longer heard and still waiting to be identified.

....

Michael

JoanD'arcRoast wrote:

In article , dave
wrote:


D Peter Maus wrote:

Telamon wrote:

In article ,
D Peter Maus wrote:


I remember, after several months playing with my S-53A, tuning
through a ham band, hearing that duck quack that could only be SSB
without a BFO, and pulling up the toggle marked 'CW.' Slowly tuning
across the band--actually, I was looking for CW on the lower end--I
heard one of the ducks become intelligible for an instant.

That got my attention.

I went back and tried to duplicate that moment by tuning very
slowly through any of duck quacking I could find. And I did succeed,
on the 80 meter band, in receiving SSB, with the CW BFO. Working my
way through the HF spectra, I succeeded in other bands as well. I was
about at 40 meters when my grandfather walked to the door.

"Do you know what you've done, here?"

I didn't have a clue.

So, he explained it to me. But I was convinced that given the CW
offset of the BFO, that I would only be able to receive LSB. USB
would be outside the passband.

Um...not so much.

The BFO had been zero beat tuned with incoming carriers by
previous owners. Which meant I could pull both USB and LSB through
the relatively narrow IF (though wide by comparison to today's sets.)

It was one of the most exciting discoveries I'd made in my
limited radio experience back then.

The next time I was at my grandfather's house, he took me down to
his radio room and let me play with his big boy toys. The Hammarlund
(which I have now,) a pair of RME's, and an FM tuner by Hallicrafters.

I've rarely had that much fun with radio. Especially getting
to swing that big-ass tri bander around in the back yard.

Things accelerated pretty quickly from there. And got out of
control right away.



Anyone have similar moments of discovery/revelation?

That's the way single side band detection works Peter.


I understand that. That's not my point. The switch was marked CW. And
it was fixed, and supposed to have been offset. So when the incoming was
centered in the passband, a 1khz tone was heard. Putting one sideband
always out of the passband. In this case, the upper.

By having the BFO tuned to zero beat when the phantom carrier was in
the center of the passband, I could then receive both sidebands as
necessary.

Primitive. And it worked.

When my grandfather showed me what I'd actually done, and we did the
math, it was pretty clear.

And keep in mind this was in the very early days, for me. I'd just
stepped out of my first crystal sets into this Halli. So this was
exciting stuff.

So, my question....anyone else had similary exciting revelations
during the early days?



I could shave off a sideband pretty cleanly with my R-390A 2 kc
mechanical filter. Judicious use of the BFO PTO, the RF gain and the KC
tuning knob allowed very clean SSB reception.


Mom got a new kitchen radio (with FM -- woohoo) so I got the old
plastic (GE?) AM tabletop... I unsoldered and re-soldered wires (with a
wood-burning stylus) at random on the front end, and lo and behold!
Radio Havana and Radio Moscow and BBC! I was hooked! (I was ten years
old... and remember soldering while the radio was plugged into the AC
mains -- HA,HA!)
-j

My revelation came when I connected a homemade digital frequency display
to my Hallicrafters S-20R for the first time in 1977. It cost about $100
to build it back then. It opened up a whole new world of accurate
frequency readout. It was a real luxury in those days.

Drakefan wrote:
JoanD'arcRoast wrote:

In article , dave
wrote:


D Peter Maus wrote:

Telamon wrote:

In article
,
D Peter Maus wrote:


I remember, after several months playing with my S-53A, tuning
through a ham band, hearing that duck quack that could only be SSB
without a BFO, and pulling up the toggle marked 'CW.' Slowly
tuning across the band--actually, I was looking for CW on the
lower end--I heard one of the ducks become intelligible for an
instant.

That got my attention.

I went back and tried to duplicate that moment by tuning very
slowly through any of duck quacking I could find. And I did
succeed, on the 80 meter band, in receiving SSB, with the CW BFO.
Working my way through the HF spectra, I succeeded in other bands
as well. I was about at 40 meters when my grandfather walked to
the door.

"Do you know what you've done, here?"

I didn't have a clue.

So, he explained it to me. But I was convinced that given the
CW offset of the BFO, that I would only be able to receive LSB.
USB would be outside the passband.

Um...not so much.

The BFO had been zero beat tuned with incoming carriers by
previous owners. Which meant I could pull both USB and LSB through
the relatively narrow IF (though wide by comparison to today's sets.)

It was one of the most exciting discoveries I'd made in my
limited radio experience back then.

The next time I was at my grandfather's house, he took me down
to his radio room and let me play with his big boy toys. The
Hammarlund (which I have now,) a pair of RME's, and an FM tuner by
Hallicrafters.

I've rarely had that much fun with radio. Especially
getting to swing that big-ass tri bander around in the back yard.

Things accelerated pretty quickly from there. And got out of
control right away.



Anyone have similar moments of discovery/revelation?

That's the way single side band detection works Peter.


I understand that. That's not my point. The switch was marked CW.
And it was fixed, and supposed to have been offset. So when the
incoming was centered in the passband, a 1khz tone was heard.
Putting one sideband always out of the passband. In this case, the
upper.

By having the BFO tuned to zero beat when the phantom carrier was
in the center of the passband, I could then receive both sidebands
as necessary.

Primitive. And it worked.

When my grandfather showed me what I'd actually done, and we did
the math, it was pretty clear.

And keep in mind this was in the very early days, for me. I'd just
stepped out of my first crystal sets into this Halli. So this was
exciting stuff.

So, my question....anyone else had similary exciting revelations
during the early days?



I could shave off a sideband pretty cleanly with my R-390A 2 kc
mechanical filter. Judicious use of the BFO PTO, the RF gain and the
KC tuning knob allowed very clean SSB reception.


Mom got a new kitchen radio (with FM -- woohoo) so I got the old
plastic (GE?) AM tabletop... I unsoldered and re-soldered wires (with a
wood-burning stylus) at random on the front end, and lo and behold!
Radio Havana and Radio Moscow and BBC! I was hooked! (I was ten years
old... and remember soldering while the radio was plugged into the AC
mains -- HA,HA!)
-j

My revelation came when I connected a homemade digital frequency display
to my Hallicrafters S-20R for the first time in 1977. It cost about $100
to build it back then. It opened up a whole new world of accurate
frequency readout. It was a real luxury in those days.
If you know how, you can tune any radio with a bandspread dial to within
5 kHz by using a calibrated spreadsheet.