A Blog reader of yesterday's posting shared with me a "fifth" issue for the RFH. To be totally transparent I hadn't even thought of this issue, and realistically it may be the most important of them all.
The 7 Part CW Transmitter.
If you listen to or watch the SolderSmoke Podcast you will often hear reference to the Michigan Mighty Mite CW Transmitter. The mention of this rig is in connection with that being an excellent 1st step in the sojourn of homebrewing.
Depending on which article you download, it can have as little as 7 parts. Although trust me, don't put the skinned down version to an antenna without having the W3NQN, Low Pass Filter between the M^3 and the antenna. Even with its low power output, it can be heard hundreds of miles distant from you.
Back to the 5th issue... With only 7 parts there is likely very few ways (like maybe 1) to connect those parts and have it work as a transmitter. Additionally, there are only so many parts substitutions you can make and still have it work.
While the M^3 is a great starter project, it is also limiting and does not give rise to experimentation with alternative topologies. True you could take those 7 parts and fit them into different enclosures like maybe a really fat fountain pen or a Mothers Oats box, but it still is an M^3 and not a new design or topology.
That is the 5th issue: With the lesser availability of formerly readily available through hole parts the circle of things you can do with what is left is a very much smaller circle.
Yes, you can do things with the now available parts but using only the 7 parts in the M^3, does limit you to a low power CW Oscillator transmitter.
The real impact of the 5th issue is that as a ham you are not moving forward with the newer technologies. While you may hate the idea of SDR, you still can't argue with the ability to hear those signals pop out of the cacophony of noise and static and then there are those colorful waterfalls of signals.
Ham radio is a very large tent and in reality, the homebrewer is a mere fly spec in the sea total hams. The majority of worldwide hams are appliance operators, and they really don't care if the BF998 is obsolete. They have the latest SDR box and the changes they will make are not hardware items but the latest firmware upgrade.
But there is another side to the 5th issue and that relates to the work of individual ham homebrewers who gave us things like SSB (Villard, W6OYT) and lest we forget SDR (Youngblood, K5SDR). It was a ham in a cold garage that took the 1st step. But the proliferation took large companies with lots of resources -- but it all had to start with an idea from an experimenter.
If that experimenter is self-limiting to only discrete parts, no chips, no digital electronics and no SMD, then the pipeline is going dry!
Them that know can make it go.
73's
Pete N6QW