CO6CBF: "I began operating on the HF bands using homebrewed radios. Mainly on CW running just 10 Watts. My very first phone transmitter was a controlled carrier AM modulator for the 160m band using tubes and components salvaged from an old TV set."
My good friend Dean KK4DAS has built a DSB rig for 10 meters and is working a lot of DX with it. Peter Marks in Australia has also jumped into the DSB game. A few of the students we are working with at the local high school may get their General Class licenses and convert their Direct Conversion receivers to Double Sideband transceivers.
All of this has caused me to reminisce about the famous Cuban Double Sideband rigs. Homebrew Hero Arnie Coro CO2KK used to talk about these rigs on his "DXers Unlimited" program on Radio Havana Cuba. But Arnie recently passed away, and with him I think a lot of the background info on the Cuban DSB rigs has also disappeared. I find very little about these rigs on the internet -- I have not been able find a single picture. The Radio Havana Cuba archive of Arnie's shows has disappeared.
Back in February I talked to Yulian CO6YI on 20 meters about the Cuban DSB rigs. He said he had a lot of background info on them, and said he would try to send it to me. I hope he is able to do this.
The results of my initial Googling appear below. There has to be more out there. I'm thinking that there must be a lot of background info on the Islander and Jaguey rigs sitting on the hard drives of radio amateurs. It is time to give this info wider circulation. Please send me any info you have on these rigs. Of particular interest would be schematic diagrams and photos of the rigs.
https://www.paara.org/newsletter/2000/graph200007.pdf
The Super Islander Mark VI: https://docplayer.net/24137256-Radio-havana-cuba-dxers-unlimited-s-weekend-edition-for-sunday-sunday-9-august-2015-by-arnie-coro-radio-amateur-co2kk.html
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 17:48:59 -0500 From: "Prof. Arnaldo Coro Antich"Subject: Re: GB> 6EH7 vs. 6EJ7 as RF Amplifier
Dear amigo Chris: You are absolutely right ! EF184 is the best pentode for RF amplifier duty... But, let me ask you something... have you thought about the ECC88 and the even better ECC189 dual triodes that were designed for TV tuner work, and that incidentally were also about the last vacuum tubes ever designed from ""scratch"" until Phillips and other European manufacturers stopped from making receiving type vacuum tubes. The ECC189 is simply wonderful for a front end !!! I am sure that you are aware of our limitations here at my QTH regarding the possibility of obtaining solid state modern devices... so we still make ""new"" ham radio rigs using mostly vacuum tubes... We even still make a version of "" The Islander"" a DSB transceiver with direct conversion vacuum tube receiver... Tube lineup is EF184 RF amp ECH81 product detector ECH81 triode section not used ECL82 triode audio preamp ECL82 pentode audio output 6AH6 VFO ( Russian equivalent 6*5P ) Audio filter provided by good working brain of operator !!! Keep up the good work amigo !!! 73 and DX YOur friend in Havana Arnie Coro
CO2KK
http://ibiblio.org/modena/GLOWBUGSpiobaire/glowbugs.piobaire.weekly.html
Today’s first question came from a long time listener in India. Rajiv tells me that at this moment he is not able to pick up our station on the shortwave bands, and he rightly assumes that this is because of the very low solar activity… but Rajiv who lives in the garden city of India, Bangalore, the home of the nation’s electronic and other high tech industries, is able to read the scripts of the program that are made available to several short wave listeners clubs e-mail distribution lists. Rajiv tells me that he wants to obtain the electronic files of the Super Islander amateur radio transceiver to compare the circuit diagrams and design philosophy with a similar project that is becoming very popular among Indian radio amateurs. Ok amigo Rajiv… I have already sent you all the files including some nice digital photos of the first prototype of the Super Islander, that as you will see, has two final amplifier options , one built using NPN RF power transistors, and the other one using two vacuum tubes that are very easy to find here in Cuba from recycled TV sets. The Super Islander is a single band transceiver that can be built for the 160, 80 or 40 meter bands. Here in Cuba amigo Rajiv, the most popular amateur band nowadays is two meters, using the FM narrowband mode, and the second most popular band among Cuban radio amateurs is 40 meters, that’s why most of the Super Islanders are built for operating between 7.000 and 7.150 kiloHertz. The double sideband signal generated by the Super Islander simple circuit is very stable, and very few if any radio amateurs that contact stations using the Super Islander are able to detect that it is a double side band and not a single side band signal what they are hearing. One of the most outstanding features of the Super Islander single band amateur radio transceiver is that it is modular, so those who want to build it, are able to build and test each module as a single project, and after all the modules are fully tested, then they are easily wired together . The parts count, that is the number of components required to build a Super Islander was kept intentionally as low as possible, both to simplify its construction and to increase the reliability. I hope that amigo Rajiv in Bangolore , India will be able to make good use of the Super Islander’s files, and maybe even go ahead and build one , as the parts required are almost universally available, because that was one of the design requirements that I set when starting the Super Islander project more than fifteen years ago….You can learn more about this simple amateur band transceiver by sending a request for the Super Islander files to arnie@xxxxxx … I will send it as a dot zip file and you will be able to see circuit diagrams, photos and full descriptions of the different modules of this nice little rig, that has proven itself under the most difficult circumstances, like handling emergency communications links during tropical storms.
http://www.hard-core-dx.com/hard-core-dx/2007/msg02587.html
Beginners generally build one of two radios; the vacuum tube Islander or the solid state Jaguey. The Islander is a DSB/CW Cuban design using a very clever low parts count circuit and a direct conversion receiver. The Jaguey, named for the Jaguey Grande Radio Club in Matanzas province, is a generic design, with a DC receiver, DSB and CW, using solid-state components. Many of its ideas are from Wes Hayward's W7ZOI's Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur. The lack of mechanical filters or quartz crystals to homebrew SSB filters made Cuban designers CO5GV, CO2JA and CO2KK choose a DSB and CW rig. Fitted with good quality capacitors for the VFO, it works quite well from a 12-volt car battery in hurricane emergencies.
For those that speak the local language, there seems to be recordings held here:
ReplyDeletehttps://web.archive.org/web/20220701035026/https://www.radiohc.cu/podcasts
72/3
Tony G4WIF
Thanks Tony. I may be missing something but I don't see any of Arnie Coro's programs on this site. WayBack machine doesn't seem to help either.
ReplyDelete73 Bill
Hello Bill a couple of decades ago the islander was an heavily discussed project on a couple of forums, one was the glowbugs reflector. Most of the design seems to come straight from older hand book designs. I may still have printouts laying about. Keith
ReplyDeleteThanks Keith. Tony's comments prompted me to do a search in Spanish, and sure enough I came across a great article (with pictures) about the Islander. I posted it -- I couldn't wait. If you could find more info on these rigs, that would be very helpful. We still need schematics. 73 Bill
ReplyDeleteI know this is an old thread, I'm CO7WT from Cuba, I started my endeavor in ham radio with a islander board.
ReplyDeleteThey (FRC, like ARRL but in Cuba) made a print of a PCB to build the Islander, with component numbers and values, making construction fool proof, I think it was on the 90 or end of the 80...
Mine was built with scraps from an old KRIM 218 rusian B&W TV as Coro's explain, later on I get the 6bz6 and 6be6 tubes for the receiver (this worked better than the russian parts) the VFO was a transistorized, made with russian components and a friend CO7CO Amaury, explain me a trick: thermal endurance:
Make a week of crust the VFO board on the snow like frost on the fridge (yes frost ones) during the nights and put them at the sun by day.
This in deed improved stability, this was an old trick.
I made many modifications with the years mostly from 1998 to 2004 ish... better filters in front of the first RX stage (Same IF described between stages) improved selectivity and out of band rejection, remember we had on that days broadcast as low as 7100 khz
Tx part was a pair of russian 6P7 (eq. RCA 807) in paralell, etc.