The thing that prevents most from attempting to homebrew their own equipment
is being afraid of failing. The more you hear that things have to be just right
and well designed the less confidence a person, particularly a young person,
will have when attempting to build their own gear. The thing that convinced me
that I could do it was having a field day with some high school friends that
were older and going away to college in a year or two. My friend Fred had a
homebrew transmitter with a 6AG7 oscillator, a 6L6 driver and 813 final running
CW and I believe he had a modulator also but we operated mostly CW. It was
crude and had a clip lead on the plate tank coils for changing bands but worked
just fine. The point is that it did not have to be perfect in anyone's eyes to
work.
I later built my own transmitter with a pair of 6146B finals, they were new
then and I had lots of problems getting it to work, but I learned from it and
continued to homebrew after that. I was only in the 9th grade then. I took a
class in radio and TV repair taught by Hugh Phillips. He was a very interesting
teacher. First semester was all circuits DC and AC vectors and such. Then we
went on to learn how radios worked. I did not have a chance to go on to TV tech
stuff. But most of his students did not become radio-TV technicians but went
on to college and became engineers.
The biggest problem with college students in engineering or science today
is that they never tinkered or homebrewed anything. they have to often learn
rhymes to remember which way to turn a screw driver. That is sad. Today/s
students don't go to college with a passion for a career but decide what they
will do based on the income they expect to get for the effort and cost.
73
Bill wa4lav
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