A bit of radio history

[GB46]

Getting back to the topic of radio nostalgia, below is a picture taken in 1968 of my shack. The term "shack" was well-deserved, since the equipment was about as jury-rigged as it gets. Who can guess the make of that receiver?

I was a technician-class ham operating exclusively on 2 meters. The receiver didn't cover VHF, so I had to use a little solid-state converter, which down-converted 2 meters to 80 meters. The converter sat on top of the receiver, and it was so light that the stiff coax at the antenna terminals kept hoisting it into mid-air. I had to anchor it down to the receiver's cabinet with a screw.

All in all, I must have had the sloppiest shack in town, and the same held true for my signal: RF feedback, TVI, splatter, you name it, and if the FCC had inspected that station, they probably would have shut me down. When I emigrated later that year I left all the equipment behind and let my licence expire. My parents had to dispose of the stuff at a garage sale when they sold the house. No great loss, but I should have asked them to forward the receiver to me. It was the only stable piece of gear in the shack, and great for shortwave listening.

 

[ridgescan]

Hallicrafters S-38?

 

[GB46]

Hallicrafters S-38?

Looks like one, doesn't it? No, it's a Lafayette HE-10. Not too many people remember Lafayette. Here's a good article comparing it with the S-38: Lafayette HE-10 / KT-200 / Trio 9R-4J Receiver

 

[ridgescan]

Looks like one, doesn't it? No, it's a Lafayette HE-10. Not too many people remember Lafayette. Here's a good article comparing it with the S-38: Lafayette HE-10 / KT-200 / Trio 9R-4J Receiver

Damn well I was as close as one can get Thanks for posting that photo. You had yourself one cool station! Stuff like that is fun to see.

 

[GB46]

Damn well I was as close as one can get Thanks for posting that photo. You had yourself one cool station! Stuff like that is fun to see.

Damn well I was as close as one can get Thanks for posting that photo. You had yourself one cool station! Stuff like that is fun to see.

That great big knob to the right of the receiver was the plate tuning of the transmitter, which ran a big 18 watts input. It was homebrew, but not by me; I had bought it secondhand at an auction. I was lucky if I got 10 watts out to the antenna. Despite that, there were frequent band openings on 2 meters, so I got out to Pennsylvania and the New England states from Central Jersey quite often. I had an 11-element yagi on the roof without a rotator, so my uncle, also a ham, came down from Long Island and climbed up there to manually point the antenna in his direction so we could contact one another. I was using AM, while he used narrowband FM. That antenna probably went with the house when my parents sold it.

Behind the transmitter you can see the power supply's rectifier tube. The socket was actually mounted on top of the transformer. It came that way; I didn't build the supply, either.

I was using an old P.A. amplifier to modulate the transmitter. However, I always had insufficient modulation, so I tended to shout into the mike.

Since the receiver was the only major item with a cabinet, there was very little shielding in the station. If I held a fluorescent tube and brought it within two feet or so of the transmitter the tube would light up. I'm not sure if my hair stood on end as well, but it could have. :lol:

 

[Lauri-CoyoteFrostbite]

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That's quite a history, GB !- with a neat radio 'shack' and story ...
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Your wall cover'd with QSL cards is quite a testament to your homebrew skills- no meager feat to have accomplished that on low power 2 metre AM. And the smile on your face says it all ! .....
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I grew up on stories from my father and his father (both hams) -about those 2 metre days. Its hard to grasp today the amount of activity that was on that band back then; populated by hundreds of Tech's, Novices ...and everyone else.
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I've heard tape recordings of my grandfather in conversations with locals, but what is most amusing is their calling of "CQ............"
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"..................K#XYZ is calling CQ and tuning around this frequency for a call- what say someone please?...."
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Crystal controlled, No ?.. 145 to 146 MHz.? everyone to his own frequency...that was awesome !...... (Smiles )
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I can only marvel at what a tropo opening must have been like in those day, though I was told you could work one station after another all evening long, talking all up and down the US east coast- They said you'd run out of energy long before you ran out of stations.
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Thanks for posting that GB
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Lauri
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[krokus]

Late at night CBK on 540 is receivable here in Michigan. It's easier now that CBET in Windsor has left the air.

Which broadcast was that? I don't see a CBET AM designator, just FM and DT.

Sent using Tapatalk

 

[GB46]

I grew up on stories from my father and his father (both hams) -about those 2 metre days. Its hard to grasp today the amount of activity that was on that band back then; populated by hundreds of Tech's, Novices ...and everyone else.

Yes, it was a lot like CB during its heyday. I never had to wait long to make a contact.

"..................K#XYZ is calling CQ and tuning around this frequency for a call- what say someone please?...."
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Crystal controlled, No ?.. 145 to 146 MHz.? everyone to his own frequency...that was awesome !...... (Smiles )

I used only one frequency: 145.026. For some reason my other crystals were defective. At any rate, yes, everyone tuned around for a call; very few had VFOs to reply on the same frequency. I once tried to use an old military surplus transmitter as a VFO, because it covered the same 8 mHz frequency range as my crystal (my transmitter used triplers and doublers to get it up to 2 meters). Well, I underestimated how much power came out of that surplus rig, and smelled smoke as soon as I tried it out. It had melted one of the coils in the first stage of my transmitter, so I had to wind a new one.

I can only marvel at what a tropo opening must have been like in those day, though I was told you could work one station after another all evening long, talking all up and down the US east coast- They said you'd run out of energy long before you ran out of stations.

Yes, there were some real pile-ups when the DX was coming in, especially when a guy in Peterborough, New Hampshire came on the air. People fought tooth and nail to work him, including me. I succeeded eventually. Whenever the fog rolled in the skip would roll in with it. On the day that JFK was assassinated we were dismissed from school early, and it was foggy, so I ignored the news -- I was oddly unaffected by it -- and ran up to the station as soon as I got home.

 

[a29zuk]

Which broadcast was that? I don't see a CBET AM designator, just FM and DT.

Sent using Tapatalk

Sorry, was going off the top of my head. I looked it up and it was CBEF. Was getting the call letters mixed up with CBET-TV 9.
Doing a little google research offered a 2013 change. CBE on 1550 switched over to FM. CBEF moved from 540 to 1550 were it presently broadcasts.

Jim

 

[Lauri-CoyoteFrostbite]

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"............when a guy in Peterborough, New Hampshire....came on the air......'
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That wasn't by any chance W2NSD/1, Wayne Green, was it ?...If so he was a friend of my grandfather who wrote many articles for his Magazine, 73.
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W2NSD/1 ("Never Say Die") was quite the mountain top location-- and from what I have been told by the older hams in my family- it had quite the powerful signal on many of the V/UHF ham bands.
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I never knew him, but I grew up reading many of his editorials in old copies of 73... I think his writings and attitudes to the Ham Hobby formed (warp'd ) my thinking, all for the better-
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Wayne went SK 5 years ago next month.
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Lauri

 

[GB46]

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"............when a guy in Peterborough, New Hampshire....came on the air......'
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That wasn't by any chance W2NSD/1, Wayne Green, was it ?...If so he was a friend of my grandfather who wrote many articles for his Magazine, 73.
.
W2NSD/1 ("Never Say Die") was quite the mountain top location-- and from what I have been told by the older hams in my family- it had quite the powerful signal on many of the V/UHF ham bands.
.
I never knew him, but I grew up reading many of his editorials in old copies of 73... I think his writings and attitudes to the Ham Hobby formed (warp'd ) my thinking, all for the better-
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Wayne went SK 5 years ago next month.

Yep, that was him! I was aware of his magazine, but I can't remember reading it. Your grandfather probably knew some of my other ham contacts, too.

As for attitudes to the hobby, mine were probably shaped by my uncle, W2GMT, who has been a silent key for many years now. I think he started my obsession with radio when he handed me the mike in his station up in Long Island. A year or two before that I was already an avid SWL. Even earlier I had a rather dangerous fascination with electricity. At the age of four I somehow managed to plug in an appliance cord that had nothing at the opposite end. There was a dead short, and as a result the power outlet was blackened. I guess the fuse must have been a slow-blow type. At the same age I was given a toy electric shaver. It was a wind-up toy, and instead of a power cord, it had a string terminating in a suction cup I could "plug in" to the wall. Because of the sound it made and my obsession with electricity, my grandfather nicknamed me "Buzz".

 

[riverrat373]

Do British citizens still need to have a license to own and listen to a radio? I know that it was required in the past. If so, Why?

 

[GB46]

Do British citizens still need to have a license to own and listen to a radio? I know that it was required in the past. If so, Why?

I wonder about that too, but I'm betting that it's merely a tax, which helps fund government-sponsored radio stations like the BBC, even if many people don't listen to them. Here in Canada our public broadcaster, the CBC, has become commercialized over the years, esp. on their website, which is riddled with ads. They claim there's not enough public support to do otherwise. But then, if the public no longer cares about the CBC, maybe the government should stop subsidizing them, which it still does to some extent.