It must have been great to have been a ham during the heyday of homebrew gear. Imagine walking into your local club and finding a dozen or so people who share your passion for melting solder and homebrewing your own equipment. Well, I got a taste of that thanks to the Vienna Wireless Society's Makers Group. Led by Dean KK4DAS, this group of intrepid radio amateurs has built versions of Pete Juliano's Simple SSB transceiver. They are finalizing the rigs; many are already finished. And I could tell from the questions and the discussion that I was talking to a bunch of guys who knew which end of the soldering iron to grab. It was really wonderful to talk to people who had gone through the experience of building an SSB transceiver, who knew from personal experience that it is not as easy as it seems. And I could tell from the questions that many of these guys are already thinking of their next projects, of how to put to use the experience they gained building Pete's SSB rig.
Dean asked me to talk to the group about my recently completed "Mythbuster" rig. This was a good topic for the group because my rig is similar enough to the Simple SSB that they could relate to it, but different enough that it could give them ideas about how they might do things differently next time.
I really enjoyed this session. I'm glad that VWS captured it on video. I think SolderSmoke listeners and readers will like watching this video.
Thanks to Dean KK4DAS and the VWS Makers group for hosting me. And thanks to Jacek KW4EP for helping with the video.
Here is the Vienna Wireless Society's YouTube Channel:
When I saw the video was an hour long, I figured “I’m not going to watch that whole thing”...
ReplyDeleteI did watch the whole thing, and it kept my interest all the way. Good job.
Bill N5ALO