A Trip Back in Time. My middle son, Tim and his lovely Amy visited yesterday as we celebrated the 4th of July. Several visits ago, Tim mentioned some items that were of his childhood that might be lurking in about 10 boxes of stuff that were in the move some 12 years ago. These were stored in my garage and yet to be opened some 12 years later. At the time of the prior visit, we set July 4th as the date to open the time capsule.
We didn't find the stuff he had on his list but did find a whole box of family photos that were not collected with other photos I have.
Concurrently, with the passing of the XYL, there are some legal matters I had to revisit and just last week in a meeting with our lawyer, she asked a rather strange question seeing as we had been married for 57 years. She asked me was it a Happy Marriage. My quick answer was no one sticks around for 57 years if they are unhappy.
But in looking at those photos which actually spanned some 40 years my answer is more than just sticking around -- it is an affirmative Yes. I focused on facial expressions. If someone is unhappy it will show in the photos. Conversely, joy is hard to hide. Firstly, those photos affirmed the XYL was sure hot looking (an important criterion being Italian). But more importantly I can see in those photos her commitment to the family. There were the usual birthday party photos of the kids, and you could just clearly see the proud Mom.
So, the 10-box opening yesterday was not a simple act of finding some old junk but instead brought closure in the sense... it was a great run!
The 8042 Vacuum Tube is a 6146 in disguise and a rather odd duck. The filament voltage is 1.6 Volts (AC or DC) at 3.2 Amps. It has an "instant heating" filament taking but one second to light up the fire in the wire and you are good to go. The SDR guys will call that a terrible latency. But for portable equipment it conserves power. A startling revelation as a NIB matched pair on eBay can be had for about $20.
The Project X transceiver has a pair of these and so you could be mobile in a parked car where in the receive mode the rig draws really low current and hitting the PTT turns on the DC-to-DC inverter to produce the high voltage and provide filament power. Read Drain the Battery. Many pieces of hybrid equipment of the 60's era had a switch to actually turn off the filaments (SBE-34 and Yaesu FT-101).
Now another twizzle, an innovation, as the Project X rig was a hybrid rig but the only tubes were 8042's which were off during receive. There was no tube driver circuit. Sufficient drive power came from three transistors in the driver stage.
There is a listing on eBay under Hallicrafters for a military SSB radio called the SBT-100 (AKA The Village Radio). This radio uses an uncanny look alike three transistor driver stage. So, who stole from whom? The Village Radio was a product of the Vietnam war where these radios were given to the village chief who was supposed to report Viet Cong activity. It is suspected this was a CIA brainchild who failed to recognize the village chief was the Viet Cong. Take the smile off you face Project X is not an SBT-100. The SBT-100 is a 6 Channel SSB transceiver that would be ripe for a JF3ZB + Si5351 conversion.
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How did you do on yesterday's citizenship test? Yeah, that was sneaky to not have Vermont as one of the 13 Colonies. Speaking of that there is some stupid event with ham radio where stations are located in the 13 Colonies and if you contact all 13 you get a free case of dermatophytosis.
Them that know can make things go.
73's
Pete N6QW