Friday, December 13, 2019

Crystals -- Old and New and World War Two


I was watching Greg Charvat's great video about the WWII ARC-5 receiver yesterday. Greg admonished all of us to preserve any WWII gear we might have in our shacks.  Just one day earlier I had found the crystal pictured above in my junk box.   There is some old stuff floating around in here! I will preserve this one. 

Speaking of crystals,  Walter KA4KXX recently sent me some 40 meter crystals for use with my ET-2 transceiver.  Walter suggested that I use them to check into the daily (1300Z) Sunrise Net on 7123 kHz.  These were modern "short" computer crystals.  So I put them into FT-243 and FT-241 holders.  (Don't worry Greg, no WWII gear was destroyed in the process).  It was kind of fun to put the new rocks in old boxes. They work just fine in the ET-2.  Thanks again Walter! 



Finally, Chris KD4PBJ has been helping a buddy of his buy a Drake 2B.   This morning Chris asked about the E Crystal adjustment coil on the back of the Drake.  I told him that was to allow the use of "overtone" crystals.  But, sadly, I advised him not to worry about it too much because the days of ordering bespoke crystals (overtone or otherwise) are behind us. 
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3 comments:

  1. KA7OEIDecember 13, 2019 at 2:18 PM

    For getting custom, bespoke crystals - one place used by hams is "Quartslab" in the U.K. who say on their page "... nor order too small." Of course, such crystals aren't super cheap - but they probably won't break the bank, either.

    Their history page seems to talk about several people named "Dave" - one of which has an alter-ego called "G4AKY".

    I've not ordered from them (yet) but I've seen good reports on the microwave RF groups from those who have had to have special crystals made for their transverters.

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  2. AnonymousDecember 13, 2019 at 7:24 PM

    no need for rocks for that old boat anchor any more. Just us an si5351 and a mini arduino. I do it all the time and they dont drift AND you can change them at will. 12 bucks will buy the parts...KA9OOI

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  3. AnonymousDecember 13, 2019 at 11:43 PM

    https://kc9on.com/product-category/crystals/

    Try these for solid state stuff

    Ed KC8SBV

    ReplyDelete