An Excellent Morning at the Manassas, Virginia Hamfest

I was quite pleased with the valuable items obtained at the Manassas Virginia Hamfest this morning.  Armand WA1UQO and I once again combined forces, offering each other advice and counsel (NO!   Forget it!) as we went through the flea market. 

Above you can see what I got:
TOP ROW: 1)  A bunch of boxes.  Nice aluminum boxes and two really good chassis.  I may now have to build something with thermatrons.   Armand gave me a really nice Ten-Tec box.  Thanks Armand!
MIDDLE ROW 2)  Ten much needed coax patch cords.  I promise to check the connections before using them.  Really.  I mean it this time. 
3)  A nice circular coax switch.
4) Two large hemostats.  I told the woman I needed them for some surgery that I'd be performing later in the day.  She was not amused.
5) A homebrew SWR Monimatch box.  Amazing.  Dennis Klipa and I have been talking about these, so I bought this homebrew version.
6) Nice Jackson Brothers reduction drive with tuning indicator. 
7) Really nice variable cap.
8)  Three crystals: two for 3.579 MHz CBLA work, the other for 40 meter phone.
9) Forehead "coalminer" lamp
10)  Some PC boards.
BOTTOM ROW 11) LARGE box of 455 kc IF transformers

As we were making the rounds we ran into Charles AI4OT.  On the tailgate of his truck Charles had a BITX20 in operation!  You can see it in the picture.  Great to see you Charles and FB on the BITX.

Jan PA3GSV's Amazing Mate for the Mighty Midget

We have featured the amazing homebrew work of PA3GSV before:

http://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2016/04/my-mate-for-mighty-midget-thermatron.html

Jan is at it again, this time building a Dutch version of Lew McCoy's Mate for the Mighty Midget.  Look at front panel! But wait, there is more!

Here is a side view of the chassis.  Wow.  What, you may ask, is that round thing?

Holy cow!  Homebrew Vernier reduction drive made from the cap of a sewer pipe.  And a homebrew dial cord arrangement.  Jan is clearly breaking new ground in ham radio homebrew re-purposing.

Jan writes:

Bill:

Here a little update on the MMrx.

Got almost all the parts, except for the Miller 4411 300 uH coils, for which I am attempting to make my own.

While I was looking for some pictures of this coil, if it was shielded or not (found a vintage online Miller catalogue J ),

I stumbled across this article, the W2MQ “Hamster”

There is no mention of the MMrx, but the text is very in line with the latter. Nice read.

 http://www.njarc.org/broadcaster/BC2010-04.pdf

 Also while looking for parts, I saw this supplier of FT-241 xtals who sell for reasonable prices ($10) .

Maybe you already know this company:

 https://www.fairradio.com/catalog.php?mode=view&categoryid=198

 Vernier drive 1:19

The drum is made from a sewerage end cap got from the hardware store.

Still under construction J

Added a front control to switch the BFO on/off, together with another crystal or some arrangement to make AM (broadcast) reception possible.

I want to try a regen detector instead of the 2 germanium diodes, followed by a pentode for some more audio output.

Regen and AF gain control are also at the front.

In your video it looked like there was a screwdriver sticking out of the BFO oscillator coil, a trigger to put this control on the front as well J

As there is no AGC, the (S) meter will measure the plate current of the RF amplifier tube.

So, a lot of experimenting to do, and still busy with some of the mechanics.

 73  Jan

Inside a Millen 61455 IF Transformer

I found this in my junk box.   I've put it in my old Mate for the Mighty Midget receiver, in the place of the Toyo  CM455 crystal-mechanical filter (which I found to have excessive insertion loss).  I think its very cool how they squeezed two variable caps into that little can.  Designed in 1956.  Works great.  Note the promised passband: 4.7 kc at 6 db down.  Not bad for an LC device.
Here is the spec sheet:

 

Bob Crane Interviews Eric Schwartz of Elecraft About the New KX2 (with Si5351!)

Our ace correspondent Bob Crane W8SX caught up with Eric Schwartz WA6HHQ of Elecraft at the FDIM event n Dayton last month.    Here is Bob's interview with Eric:  

http://soldersmoke.com/WA6HHQFDIM.mp3

Pete and I were very pleased to see that Elecraft made use of our beloved Si5351 chip in their amazing new KX2 rig.   Check it out:

You can click on the diagram or see it directly on page 62 of the manual at this site:

http://www.elecraft.com/manual/KX2%20owner's%20man%20A4.pdf

Here's the KX2:

Three cheers for Elecraft!  Three cheers for Bob Crane! 

Excitatation! The Inspiring Knack Story of N3IC

Steve Silverman sent me this link.  This web site has been getting a lot of attention from the solder melting community.  And justifiably so.    Behold (above) the first transmitter built by Robert Glaser,  now N3IC, circa May 1969. The chassis and front panel were made from flimsy printing press sheet metal.  Note the key (as in lock and key) switch that the OM put on the front panel -- he took his responsibilities under FCC regs quite seriously.   My favorite part of this rig's story is that when he got it done, he didn't have the two 6146s for the final.  So he just took a capacitor and used it to connect the driver tube to the output network. Brilliant!  With that arrangement he made his first contact.  No wonder he labeled it "Excitatation!"  It was clearly more exciting than your standard excitation.  

Those TV power transformers look very familiar.  I was using similar devices to build a power supply for an HW-32A a few years after Dr. Glaser built this rig.  It's a wonder we survived.

FB.   Check out his site.  It is a wonderful catalog of all the stuff this very prolific builder has made over the years:

Ham project here:

http://www.icengineering.com/n3ic/projects/ham/

A broader range of projects here:

http://www.icengineering.com/n3ic/projects/

   

ANOTHER SSB Transceiver made in India

Check out the GEK:   http://homebrewcorner.blogspot.in/p/r.html

Spectacular Solar Weather

This amazing picture was taken last night at the Bharati Indian Base Station in the Larsemann Hills of Antarctica. The researchers there report that the aurora was so bright that it cast shadows.

Yesterday I was having a nice 40 meter SSB contact with N3TDE.  Rich is 179 miles away, in Pennsylvania.  At 1650 UTC, his signal very suddenly dropped into the noise. 

The purple lines along the bottom of the chart below probably explains both the aurora and the abrupt end of my 40 meter contact.