[AMPS] My ham radio history (the early days)
km1h@juno.com
km1h@juno.com
Sat, 30 Jan 1999 13:28:35 -0500
On Wed, 27 Jan 1999 15:33:25 -0500 (EST) "William L. Fuqua III"
<wlfuqu00@pop.uky.edu> writes:
>
>
> Some years ago when I was in the 9th grade I started building
>my first Ham transmitter. I wanted a Viking Valiant for Christmas
>but parents could not afford such an expensive transmitter.
> I designed a TX with a 6AG7 crystal oscillator (had a HG-10B vfo
>also)
>a 6L6 buffer multiplier and a pair of 6146B's in the final. The 6146B
>was
>a new tube then. It would run about 200 Watts plate input power. One
>fifth
>of the legal limit those days.
> My parents had a charge account at one of the electronics
>distributors
>in Nashville and I talked them into funding the project. "It was
>going
>to save them money", I said.
> Now I realize that my parents made the best decision possible.
>Not to buy a higher power transmitter but to allow me to design my
>own and learn from it.
> Well, some months later it was still not working and I had gone
>quite a bit over budget. My father came down to the shack to see
>what I was up to after receiving a bill from ELECTRA Distributing Co.
>He asked what I was spending so much money on.
> I told him that I seemed to make one mistake after another and
>had to replace a number of components that burned out while testing
>the TX.
> He then said." Making mistakes is not a bad thing. You can learn
>from
>your mistakes. Just don't learn so much at one time."
>I never forgot that conversation.
>
> The transmitter worked just fine finally. The next year I entered
>it into the science fair and only got an honorable mention. The
>judges could not believe I had done it all by myself even after
>interviewing me and discussing it with my science teacher.
> I'll have to admit that I learned a great deal from this experience
>and later I discovered that I could build transmitters from all sorts
>of used parts from old televisions, radios and junk dealers around
>town.
>I also did a great deal of horse trading with some hams for parts.
> For the next science fair I added a plate modulator that I had built
>and
>worked my way up to 3rd place. Again they could not believe I had
>built the
>thing by myself.
> Later I got a Central Electronics 10A sideband exciter with the
>modified
>ARC-5 for a VFO. That then drove my 6146B's.
>During a trip to Florida I got an old transmitter with some 813's and
>salvaged
>the power supply and used my 6146B's to drive a pair of 813's. The
>place I got
>it from was HS Electronics in Miami. HS I think stood for Ham Shack.
>A friend of mine W4WHB sold me his HT-4 which was the civilian
>version
>of the BC-610 with loads of spare tubes. Being a collage kid by this
>time
>and eager to get more power I scrapped it and built a amplifier with
>a
>pair of 250th's in grounded parallel. They worked just fine. I tried
>to
>run 3 of them but the 6146Bs just were not up to the task. Not enough
>drive.
> Now I just wish I still had the HT-4. They are quite a collector's
>item now.
>I paid $20 for it and about the same for the 813 transmitter.
>After that I had moved up to the 20A exciter and build the big power
>amplifier
>out of a 4-1000A. I had a power supply with a tapped auto transformer
>that
>would give me any voltage from 2KV to 15KV. Never ran it in to a
>amplifier
>at more than 5KV. But I did run it up to 15KV with no load just to see
>if
>it would do it. Those mercury vapor 872As really lit up.
>My mother would just come in to see the light show when I was on the
>air and had the lights turned out. The plates of the final tubes
>would
>glow red on voice peaks and the rectifiers would make a neat
>pulsating
>purple glow as well. That along with the pulsating hum from the power
>transformer (amplified by the floor boards ) really gave a ham a
>sense of POWER. I'm looking forward to building a new amplifier and
>firing
>it up. Just have to find the spare time.
> While other guys were hot rodding cars I was doing ,more or less,
>the
>same with my ham station. Really had a good time fooling with RF
>stuff and
>now days still do. Really do a lot here at work. It is truly amazing
>how
>much RF technology is used in physics research and astronomy.
>
>73
>Bill wa4lav
>
>PS I am now building another 4-1000 amplifier.
>
> William L. Fuqua III P.E. E-mail WLFUQU00@POP.UKY.EDU Phone (606)
>257-4155
> Department of Physics and Astronomy CP-177 Chem. Phys. Bldg.
> University of Kentucky , Lexington, Ky 40506-0055
Great tale Bill! Mine is somewhat a parallel.
At Bishop Loughlin HS in Brooklyn, NY there was a full blown ham club and
station. A Meisner EX Signal Shifter VFO driving a home brew 813 with PP
811 modulators and a HQ-129X rcvr with a Hallicrafters Pandadaptor. The
antennas were a Telrex 10/15/20M Xmas tree on a freestanding Aeromotor
tower on top of the 5 story school. There were several hams among the
Christian Brothers faculty and it did not take me long to get hooked at
age 14. CW was a foreign concept but I had to learn it if I wanted to do
more than listen.
I learned CW on a WW2 code tape reader and got my Novice 3 months from
the start of studying. This was Nov 24, 1955.
My first TX was a 6AG7-6L6 out of the ARRL Handbook and a regen RX from
Popular Mechanics.
After 11 months I passed my General, got involved in AF MARS,
cannabilized a pair of BC-610's and had my first KW at age 17. Went thru
various ARC-5 TX and RX stages but finally wound up with a Viking 1 and
HQ-129X.
Joined the Navy in Oct 1959 and got a fantastic education at ET School
and hands-on shipboard duty.
Joined National Radio Oct 1963 and as they say the rest is history.
I envy those who were able to go on to college but it just was not in the
deck I was dealt.
73 Carl KM1H
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