Mystic Steampunk Icelandic Radio Symbology

Mike, KC7IT, alerted me to this one. Check out the decoration on the top of this box. The artist explains:

"The electrolytically etched brass plate on top of the box depicts symbols used in science, engineering, and alchemy. An Icelandic Vegvísir is featured prominently surrounded by the components of a modern magnetron microwave transmitting tube. The background features the schematic diagram for a vintage Heathkit oscilloscope. The Vegvísir is often thought of as a mystical symbol but it is in fact a very practical mnemonic device for mastering navigational rules of thumb."

Billy has been interested in the whole "steampunk" thing (he will be a steampunk guy on Halloween) so this one caught my eye. It also made me think that we need to jazz up those Altoid tins! (Speaking of boxes, while I had the 2-B on the bench yesterday, I took its old metal case out to the garage and gave it several coats of black paint. It looks wonderful.)

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A Good Day in the Shack -- 2B Fixed, SPRAT Arrives

The temperature has dropped to around 10 C today. Fall is in the air. So it was appropriate for me to do some work on an old tube radio. (Several of our correspondents have reported similar seasonal urges to melt solder and to heat filaments.) This week my trusty Drake 2-B was giving me trouble on 17 meters. It was working on all other bands, but not on 17. Today I put it on the bench, pulled out the schematic and started troubleshooting. I quickly determined that the problem was, in fact, with the 22 MHz crystal. The 2-B has a 24.5 MHz rock for tuning the lower portion of the ten meter band. When I put that crystal in the "E" socket (where the 22 MHz crystal normally sits), the local oscillator worked just fine. Putting the 22 MHz rock back in the E socket resulted in no oscillation. And when I tried to the 22 MHz crystal in the 10 Meter socket normally used by the 24.5 MHz rock... nothing. What causes a perfectly good crystal to go bad like this?

Consulting the 2-B manual, I saw that I could also tune the 17 meter band by using (in socket D) a 14.21 MHz crystal from my junk box (it had been used in my 20 meter NE-602 DSB. transceiver). It works great. I'm listening to DK9KW calling CQ on 17 right now. Makes me want to fix up my homebrew 17 meter transmitter. (I need a final for it, and am thinking of using Farhan's JBOT circuit). I may even buy some telescoping fishing poles and rebuild my Azorean rotate-able dipole (I have the mast and the wooden center support for the fishing poles). This magnificent antenna is shown above, spreading its wings above Sao Miguel island in the Azores (our home from 2000--2003).

Icing on the cake: I went out to the mailbox, and, instead of the usual pile of bills, there was a SPRAT 148 and the G-QRP Club's Members Handbook.

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Oscillating Light Bulbs

Oh man, this is some fascinating stuff: old light bulbs found to be oscillating at VHF! Wayne, VA7AT, stumbled upon this phenomenon at age 13 while engaged in Knack activities. Now Joe Sousa explains the physics behind the emissions that caused Wayne's light bulb to interfere with the broadcast of baseball games. How long until AA1TJ has one of these bulbs on the air, making contacts? There is much in this that would appeal to Michael: light bulbs, weird physics, translations from German... You gotta love the BNC connector plugged directly into the bulb. Check it out the radio museum article here.

Hi Bill

There was a question posted on Antennex E-mail discussion group talking about how a vacuum type light bulb will oscillate and radiate RF at about 100MHZ. This answered the question I had since I was a boy of 13 experimenting with a light bulb in series with an electrolysis bath (aluminum electrodes with table salt dissolved in water) and 117vac. The bulb dimmed with the electrodes apart and at a certain position the radio I had on blanked out with fissing sound. I had to shut down the experiment quickly because the neighbors were listening on their favorite baseball game and cussed loudly .

I now know what happened on that fateful day. Here is a site I found about the oscillating light bulb http://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/rustika_lightbulb_fm_measurements.html

Wayne VA7AT

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Sputnik Rigs Cross the Pond, Cambridge to Cambridge

The Chief Designer, Michael, AA1TJ, alerted us to this wonderful post on Roger, G3XBM's blog:
http://g3xbm-qrp.blogspot.com/2011/09/sputnik-across-atlantic-today.html
We clearly see the spirit of the International Brotherhood of Electronic Wizards in Roger's comment: "Nice to think that valves used in missiles aimed at each other in the Cold War end in bringing friendship and joy. CW is a wonderful mode if you want simple equipment capable of DX." Indeed. Well done!

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Google, Supernovas... and DRAKES

I liked this ad for Google, but I now have the urge to decapitate my garden shed. Check out dad's Drake gear. Late in the clip you can see some beam antennas on a tower near the house.

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ALL the Bell System Tech Journals -- FREE!

Thanks to Dave, N8SBE, for alerting us to yet another tech treasure trove:

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/bstj/

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Earthquake Video -- From Atop the Washington Monument

Check it out. This gives you an idea of what the August quake was like (albeit from a perhaps the scariest location):

http://youtu.be/BgHC2qREslw

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2-B Trouble Continues

Thanks for all the suggestions and encouragement. I agree with WA6ARA that the bandswitch is a likely suspect. For the E socket on the Drake 2-B (that's where my 22 MHz rock goes) the bandswitch switches in not just the crystal, but also a slug-tuned coil. It is presumed to be an overtone crystal.

The receiver works fine on all other bands.

I've already hit the wafer switch with several shots of RadioShack Contact Cleaner (I'm out of De-Ox-It). And I've given position E a good work out. No joy.

I will dig deeper this week.

It may be the crystal. It looks like I got it from Drake -- it is marked "22 MHz 2C" so it may be for the 2C receiver. It has a sort of worrisome dent in the side. I may build the test oscillator that Steve recommends.

Of course, as soon as I get this fixed the sunspots will disappear and 17 will become a white noise generator.

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2B Trouble!

So this morning I hear that the solar flux is up around 190 and the higher bands are coming back to life. I turn to my trusty Drake 2-B and turn the band switch from "40" (where it has been parked for quite some time) to "E." E is the position that kicks in the 22 MHz overtone crystal on the 6U8 local oscillator. I eagerly turn the pre-selector to the area where the 17 meter band used to appear and... nothing. Nada. Silence. No band noise. Nothing.

I thought the 6U8 might be going a bit soft. I swapped it out. The problem remains. I twisted that E band coil from one end to the other. Nothing. I cleaned the bandswitch contacts. No joy. Now I'm thinking it is the 22 MHz crystal. But its kind of strange for a crystal to just suddenly go bad... It worked before. The receiver is working on all the other bands, so the problem is really that the oscillator just won't go on 22 MHz.

What do you wizards recommend?

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Drake 2-B Video

Some cynical readers will see this as yet another effort on my part to drive up the net asset value of the SSDRA2B Investment Fund, but I really just thought that those of you who have not had the pleasure would enjoy seeing a Drake 2-B in operation. Pity he didn't have the Q-multiplier. I'm sure some of the other 2-B videos on YouTube (there are many!) will feature 2-B regeneration.


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HW-7s, CB:"A Gateway Drug", and The Manly Way to Tune a Transmitter

I got a kick out of this e-mail from Cory, WA3UVV:

Hi, Bill!

While listening to SS137, you brought back some warm memories.

Bert Sessler, WA3WAW and I both grew up in Uniontown and met via CB – which was a gateway drug to Ham Radio for many of us. Within a fairly short time, we became good friends. Although I moved away some 30 years ago, I always try to get together with him when I’m back in town.

The HW-7 references also reminded me of trips into the nearby hills (being a few years older, I had my driver’s license and car before him) with his HW-7 and some lantern batteries. We’d park my ’69 Chevy Nova and then hike the trails to find some suitable trees for antenna supports. Bert’s code speed was impressive right from the start and he’d work more stations than me, in rapid succession. (How many 25+ WPM Novices do you know?)

Later, I’d get a HW-7 (and TenTec Power Mite 2) for those hikes alone, but it wasn’t quite the same as doing it with a friend. These days, I go to parks in the relatively flat South Jersey or Delaware with a FT-817ND, MFJ-9030 or 20M VXO’d RockMite and TX Topper Amp. Recently, pangs of nostalgia for my HW-7 (and ARC-5 station, for that matter) have arisen. I know the receiver doesn’t stack up against the new stuff I have, but it was certainly good enough for many enjoyable contacts.

Also, John Zaruba, K2ZA, is a good friend of mine here in Gloucester County. I’ve laid hands on the DX-100 you now have. You should have seen the Collins A line John’s dad had in the racks. Everything looked almost factory new.

At our GCARC Hamfest over the weekend, John helped feed my tube addiction with 4 boxes of NOS tubes, shields, etc. I also bought his dad’s Meissner Signal Shifter. After giving it a respectful time to warm up and colorfully glow again (orange, purple and green from the “magic eye”), I attached it to a tungsten lamp – the “manly” way to tune a tube transmitter – and got RF! As it has a balanced 300 ohm output, I have to build a 6:1 balun and hope to have it on the air next week with its characteristic chirp. Hmm, just like the HW-7 and my ARC-5’s of years gone by…

I hope you and your family are enjoying life back in DC. It’s not the milieu of Italy, but at least you’re much closer to a Ham Radio Outlet!

All the best,

Cory – WA3UVV

PS - If you have a desire to home brew a 6L6 transmitter and need a tube, let me know. My mom taught me to share...

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Getting Ready to Listen for Sputniks

October 4 is approaching and I DO NOT have a homebrew Sputnik transmitter in the works. I hang my head in shame. AA1TJ sent me the parts, but they went to one of my many APO or FPO addresses, so I suspect they are orbiting around the Azores, or London, or Lisbon, or Rome. I'm sure they will reach me eventually.

But I have come up with a way to participate in this historic event even without a homebrew replica transmitter: I will be listening for the Sputnik transmitters, and I will be doing so with a receiver of that era, a receiver that could have been used by some earnest teenager eagerly tuning for the beeps of the overhead RED MENACE. Like the intrepid young man in the picture. What a great shot! Wow, that's Roy Welch W0SL, then W5SLL! When I got into satellites in the Dominican Republic in 1994, the first tracking program that we used was Orbits II... by Roy Welch. We loved that software. From the AMSAT page: "Roy and his two-year-old daughter would put the radio speaker in a window and then go outside and listen to the strong signals while they watched the third stage booster tumbling end over end like a bright pulsating star as it passed over in the evening sky."

I will be using a Hammarlund. Moore's "Communication Receivers" says my HQ-100 was made between 1956 and 1960. PERFECT! (Mine was probably in the Dominican Republic on October 4, 1957.)

By the way, I got into the old Electric Radio magazines again, reading some more of Lew McCoy's wonderful reminiscences. He reports that during the Sputnik period he -- and apparently others -- were asked by their Uncle Sam to use their skills to monitor Soviet space activities.

Let the beeping begin! (Sputnik signals recorded by Roy Welch:
http://www.amsat.org/amsat/features/sounds/Sputnk1b-144.ra)

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