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April 26, 2024. Don't Read Today's Posting -- Kind of boring!

 Today's post reminds me of a cheesy 1930's black and white movie where this group of adventurer's lands on a remote Pacific Island and finds that the natives daily feed one of their own to this monster creature. The objective is to ward off the eating of all of them. They do not understand that in time the monster devours all of them!

I guess I sense the need to feed you, the blog readers, with something new each day otherwise you will shift your interests to The National Enquirer or Fox News. 
 
Innovation!

Our hobby is a like a large circus tent that has been divided into sections. One small section contains the group of homebrewers who are constantly looking for some new adventure. Perhaps it is with a project from the good old days or perhaps venturing forward with something involving leading edge technology.
 
Yes, the rest of the tent is involved with contests and operating. Thank goodness for all those guys shouting CQ POTA as that provides source signals when the bands seem otherwise dead. Bravo to the SOTA guys as they get exercise climbing those hills just to make a few contacts. Healthy and fun to boot.
 
Our photo for today is what appears to be a crystal set with a twist. The coil form is a spent empty beer bottle.  Bravo, as it looks like someone had some fun before they started building the radio. But indeed, this is a great choice for a coil form. It is likely greater than 2.5 inches in diameter, it is an insulator (glass) and likely super-glued to the wood base.  Note the slider tuning wand. Now this is a builder that knows some stuff!
 
In case you are looking for those really small neat ceramic trimmers as used in Band Pass Filters or gulp in an LC Analog VFO, a great source for those is Jameco Electronics in the SF Bay area. 

The ones I mostly frequently use are the 9-50pF and the 100 piece per unit price is 80% of the single unit price --now that is great column pricing for a group purchase.
 
The Sudden SSB XCVR with 2 sets of BPF's
A note about the Sudden SSB Transceiver, it uses two NE602's and relay steering for a single pass through the filter. No warmed over Bitx circuits, TIA amps, EMRFD circuits nor Facebook groups used here.

So, all in one breath, Beer Bottles and Ceramic Trimmers. You have been fed for the day.

73's
Pete N6QW

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