Pay More and Get Less. Flash the Cash!

In recent days I have had several email exchanges with W4OP, Dale and W9RAN, Bob. In the course of those discussions SSB radio models came up that never really made it to market.   Certainly, companies like Gonset, E F Johnson and Cosmophone were not obscure and had a track record, but they really never had the success with SSB products like Heathkit, Swan, Drake, Collins and of course Atlas.  That is a key issue as none of these companies exist today building ham equipment. So, what caused some to not enter a market or others to withdraw. An over simplistic answer is foreign competition. You know FBC, Faster, Better and Cheaper. That in my opinion is only part of the answer.  The other part may involve the people versus a team. Swan and Atlas are synonymous with Herb Johnson. E F Johnson and Gonset, were family-owned companies as was Drake and Collins. We shouldn't forget Hallicrafters (Bill Halligan) and of course WRL (Leo Myerson) and Ten Tec (Al Khan). One must ponder...

Speaking of Radio Activity, JFF, (Just For Fun) I operated Field Day yesterday and made one contact on 20M with a station in Oregon using the KWM-1. I snickered a bit as I mused... an old guy running an old radio! As I did so, I held up my middle finger and saluted that organization sponsoring the event and noted most signals were really down in the mud. The exception of course was the station I worked. How amazing is Cycle 25...NOT! Afterward I was thinking about the San Diego area which is approximately 200 miles south of me. San Diego is the home of Black's Beach whose southern portion of course is a nude beach ... a real chance to get fully tanned. But more importantly the San Diego Area was a hot bed of amateur radio manufacturing and homebrewing during the 1960's and 1970's. If you don't really enumerate the manufacturers and products, then you would miss the impact. Likely few of those entities or remnants thereof exist today. But let's make a list. * SWAN E...

Field Day Weekend. This is where you prove that the $2400 you spent for a new appliance box was not good enough. Should have bought the $6K rig. In the posting of 6/27 on the SB-101 restoration, N5OLA presented two tools/aids that might qualify as hitting the jackpot. A $20 Bill placed with the newly married couple will get you these. The Dental Tool Kit, a best seller, has uses beyond boat anchor restoration and I am thinking SMD soldering. I am ashamed I didn't get a set of these earlier in life.  There was a rust remover with a strange name that I need to track down which I will share when I find it. Found it ... another $20. In case you haven't figured it out these can be bought at Amazon.  While you are shopping at Amazon, throw these in the shopping cart. These might be the third hand needed to assemble the LMO back in the case. Them that know can make it go. 73's Pete N6QW

 A Tip of the Cap to N5OLA I had an email exchange with Will, N5OLA. several weeks ago, regarding finding replacement L2 and L3 coils for you know "That Rig". N5OLA lives on south Padre Island and does Heathkit restorations. His videos are quite excellent, and I learned a lot about how to clean up the old boat anchors. I need to find where to buy some Krud Kutter. In watching his videos, it is clear he has a process, and I am still warming up to immersing a rig in the kitchen sink and giving it a bath followed by a bake in the oven followed by a process similar to sun drying tomatoes. The end results speak for themselves.  One learned lesson for me -- avoid any work on the SB Series of Heathkits with the LMO. I swear I spotted three hands in the video as he reassembled the LMO back into the chassis. In truth it looks like you would need three hands. Going back to an earlier statement regarding N5OLA's process and that starts with a full inspection of the "as is"...

  You buy another boat anchor! I bought this SBE-34 for less than a junker HW-32A. It was missing the Collins filter (I had a spare) and was sold for parts and not working.  Replacing the filter and a bit of tweaking of the IF and Mixer transformers and this is what you get. The VFO is subject to some jumping (Damn Analog VFO's) but the dial corrector pot needs a shot of DeOxit and an adjustment of R42, a pot in the VR circuit is needed. There might be a loose connection someplace, but we will track it down. I have three sets of 6GB5's from former SBE-34 sojourns and a replacement of the ones that came with the radio and the driver tube, a 12BY7, yields 60 watts out on 40 and 20M. So, it meets spec.  This was a late build as it shows Raytheon on the back panel and was made in South San Francisco. One of the PC boards (converter stage) is actually silk screened with parts identified with an outline and value. One other clue about what was touched... red paint was applied t...

After two months of toil it is "Basta" time for the HW-32A. Or better said I seek more productive use of my time. A great anchor point is the SBE-33 that was purchased for $45 and given the N6QW overhaul. Now that was a satisfying experience.  I dug it out as it was a project that was vastly more complicated and to provide a reference point of what can be done with old boat anchors. You have not lived life until you fish out and replace all of the electrolytic caps that are used in the voltage quadruple circuit. Enjoy! Them that know can make things go (most of the time). The SBE-33, vintage 1962 was a four band (80-15) Hybrid Rig featuring a Collins Filter, all solid state except for the driver and final and had a built-in power supply. The transistors were mostly Germanium and featured a bilateral configuration, certainly not the 1st bilateral, but 50 years ahead of a Bitx rig. A short history of Ham Radio is here . 73's Pete N6QW

  As I was rummaging through the bins at Apex Surplus, I just knew this NIB Raytheon Knob would be perfect for the Hybrid Wireless SSB rig. It is! I used the Smart Watch yesterday when I took my walk around the neighborhood. Now I am really upset! The metrics showed that I only burnt calories equivalent to 1/2 of a wheat bagel without any topping. All the time through the walking adventure I was thinking about a toasted bagel with cream cheese topping -- after all I had just exercised.  A quick calculation indicated that I would have to do three times that walking course just to offset the bagel reward -- Dumb Watch! Them that know can make things go! 73's Pete N6QW

How many of you own a smart watch? Well now I have one too. It is not something I would buy for myself but was a gift from the offspring who are concerned about my safety. Supposedly it has things like fall detection and calling 911 and even an EKG. The health array includes performance workouts. You also can receive text messages and emails. The other bonus you can answer the phone on your Smart Watch. Believe it or not I would just like to know what time it is and that is the toughest thing to do! Once the Smart Watch is in a do loop mode navigating menus swiping up, swiping down turning the outer dial does not get you back to the watch face. Even though I was presented the largest form of the Smart Watch it is incompatible with FFS -- Fat Finger Syndrome. I received a long-distance call yesterday from a ham friend who was sharing a tale of woe -- smoked finals. When I answered my phone, the call went to the watch where the puny audio output was hardly heard. Dumb Watch! You cannot i...

Disorganized Mayhem! But I loved it. You had an array of resistors on the same shelf as O Rings. Nothing is priced and while shopping boxes were provided, small bags would have been really helpful. I bought two things, a large diameter Raytheon tuning knob (NIB) and a relay socket. $10. In thinking back to 1967 San Francisco and the tough choice between the BC-348 Receiver and the topless hotties it was a reminder. Well today the hotties would be in their 80's suffering from sagging boobs, but the BC-348 receivers still maintain an allure. There were no less than four of them and all in good shape and the prices ranged from $170 to $230. The sales guy hinted even those prices were subject to negotiation. There were also a bunch of National receivers from the same vintage. No HRO receivers were evident. One of them had a gear driven drive system with two circular dials with one that gave a readout to 1kHz.  So, in summary, a trip involving Boobs and Tubes and a whole lot of stuff se...

As usually happens my brain awoke me at 3AM and said "Hey Pete", activate the ABC Circuit on the HW-32A! ABC circuit, say what? Not everyone has one but should have one. The ABC stands for Automatic Brain Control and mine is telling me to stop work on the HW-32A!  Yesterday I spent over 6 hours in a hot garage chasing why I couldn't get more than 40 watts PEP out of the radio. I was not successful as I even found the extra set of finals and they yielded no more than 40 watts. BTW in aggregate the HW-32A Rx is not that good and never was. If I were to move forward with the JF3HZB dial mechanism I still would have an end result of a fancy front panel on a radio that does not function to spec. [Lipstick on a Pig, still a Pig!] The ABC says head back to Solid State or build another Hybrid SSB rig that stands head and shoulders above the HW-32A.  Currently on eBay, Buy It Now for $20 A new Hybrid SSB rig on 20M could use this filter from a HW-101. (You could too.) I have an ex...

I have violated the Rule of Three (many times over on this subject) as this might be posting #9 about the HW-32A. At times you do something that is absolutely wrong, but you seem to get the right result. I have suspected for some time that there is an issue with the ALC circuit that is preventing the HW-32A from reaching full output. This posting is to highlight such an event. The ALC circuitry in any transmitter essentially puts a brake on the input to prevent flat topping or overdriving the final. The flat topping or overdriving results in an awful signal and sounds like a buzz saw and affects transmissions close to your signal. It is not only bad form, but simply a bad signal. The ALC can take several forms but in general the input to the final amp stage is sampled and if it exceeds a certain level generates a negative voltage applied to the circuit in this case to earlier stages to reduce the gain. It is a loop and hopefully a fast time constant so that the output sounds excellent ...

Malden, MA, Cortland St., NYC, Market St., SF, Anaheim, CA, St. Louis, MO and Burbank, CA. These locations share a common bond and that bond is Surplus Electronics locations. Sadly, only one location remains today supplying the needs of those seeking POP, (Parts of Pastimes). Meshna Electronics was a mail order electronics store in Malden, MA where I bought my 1st ARC-5 for $3.50. Cortland St. in NYC of course was the home of Radio Row.  In June of 1967, I was discharged from the Navy and started my 1st civilian job right in downtown San Francisco just off of Market St.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered SF had a radio row just up the street from where I worked. I almost bought a NIB BC-348 receiver for $25. But shortly after arrival in SF, I discovered North Beach (I lived two blocks from there) and many of the topless dancers I soon discovered actually lived in my apartment complex. I never went back to look at the BC-348. There remains but one of these giants of Electro...

What better way to celebrate Father's Day than to have lunch with my favorite daughter (my only daughter) and enjoy a great meal and to get some valuable presents.  A T Shirt from the Viper Room (LA), some plastic parts storage bins and coffee mugs to replace the one I recently broke. Hey I scored! That said (and a most enjoyable time) I made some real progress on the HW-32A. Throwing caution to the wind, I made two small holes in the tops of the sealed cans (L2, L3) and a tweak or two significantly raised the output. The HW-32A uses a fixed load capacitor on the Pi Network, a 290pF, 3% Silver Mica. I read on one of the Heathkit forums that a low power output was traced to this cap. I popped it of the circuit and installed a 330pF, 2KV Polyester unit. Shazam -- 30 watts on Tune. So we had a banner day. This morning, I wanted to follow up on something I observed yesterday. I note that on voice peaks, that I hardly hit the 30 watts. By design, the HW-32A on Tune is intended to give a...

I am determined, compelled, obsessed, driven, immersed, and downright incentivized to get the HW-32A to a working state. So far, I have failed! It simply can't be that hard! See if you can spot the new parts that have been swapped in for the old parts? Most of those new parts are involved with the Transmit Mixer and Driver stage and on the Receive side the Receiver RF Amp and Receiver Mixer stage. My Heathkit HP-23 supply has a two-position switch that controls the LV value. You have a choice of either 250VDC or 300VDC. The LV value is used on the plates of the lower-level tubes and on the Screen of the 6GE5's RF amp tubes. At the 250VDC setting it is like the receiver is dead and nothing from the transmitter. In the 300VDC position the receiver comes alive and I can get about 10 watts output from the finals. So now I need to circle back to look once more at all of the voltages on the tube sockets at the 250VDC LV level. Several of the charts in the HW-32 Manual have the nomina...

I continue to try and resurrect the HW-32A and am way down the rabbit hole. Small bits of progress but no major breakthrough.   The 20M band was open last night and I could hear stations on the east coast and a couple of South American call signs. That was not good as the volume control was wide open, and you hear no change in atmospheric noise when you dis-connect the antenna. My gut tells me it is a front-end issue. Often the most fundamental test with a homebrew radio is disconnect/connect the antenna and can you hear any changes. My HW-32A flunks that simple test. I reason that with a strong band opening and a limp front end then you will hear signals but like they are in the mud. In hunting this down I tried the tube swap with known good tubes and have found some really off value components.  But by and large a target would be caps that link the circuit modules. In taking a look from 5000 feet (look at the total schematic) there are but only a few of those as there is lot...

  I went through a whole roll of solder wick and as I await Lauren Sanchez's main squeeze to send me another roll, I took a look at the transmitter circuits.  The test set up is to sample the output of the 12BY7A as seen from the Grid Input of the 6GE5's. Doesn't look too bad and sounds OK.  Later today, I hope to see the smiley truck show up with another roll of solder wick so I can attack the off-value resistors in the receive circuits. Them that know can make it go. 73's Pete N6QW No Drama up here at Newbury Park and so no military presence is evident. Shades of 103rd and Grape Street (Center of Watts) and think forward 60 years and now a photo op.

Not to the Halls of Montezuma or the Shores of Tripoli but to a city about 40 Miles from my QTH... Los Angeles. We'll have to see how that unfolds. I have great respect for the United States Marines Corp having served with them in Regimental Landing Team 4 at Chu Lai. I guess this raises many questions as a Marine Deployment is very serious business. We are all thinking was this necessary or just a photo op in the quest for relevance. We all sort of know the answer. Changed out the AGC circuitry on the HW-32A and while some improvement it did not resolve the low receive issue. I noticed some excessive heating in the 12VDC power supply to the rig filaments, and I pulled the final tubes as I suspect a possible short in the finals. That is unrelated to the low signal level detection. With the finals out of the circuit and No HV supplied, I tested some of the transmit functions. The VOX works and with an external receiver using a 1-foot antenna I could hear the HW-32A running only the ...