I kind'a skipped over this topic, not becuz it isn't interesting, for it is (I too have several handbooks that date from the 1940's and upward) - but rather I had nothing meaningful to say.
Then I remember my visit "home"- to my parent's place in Annapolis, last year.
My father, and his father, are (were) hams - a continuous time span of radios than runs from me- generationally, to before World War Two-- and even back to Marconi if you throw in my great aunt, a Marconi Girl, and some associated uncles.
That was last Christmas.
My new job (for lack of a more lofty description) in DC has brought me east-- and while it lasts (mine's a political appointment,) I can now visit my parents all the time (tho I hate the drive out to Annapolis-- its that Maryland/DC traffic.)
My father has kept a venerable museum of ham radio projects he, and his father built over the years- many right out of those ARRL handbooks.
Today I can't help reading those handbooks and projecting myself back sixty, seventy, eighty years ago-- back to a whole different era of radios.
Okay, back to earth
Looking thru his collection of things past (while awaiting the Christmas turkey,) I came across two open chassis of goodies- both simply marked "420."
One was a regen receiver with a 6AF4 detector and some other tubes for audio-----
And beside it there was its companion transmitter; a pair of 6AK5 in push-pull, a free running oscillator configuration.... an associated audio section (12AX7, 6AQ5 maybe?? I can't recall)
"Those?" said my father when I asked him about them
(I should be familiar with these 'treasures' since I grew up around them; they dated in his collection to before I was born)
"Those were a project right out of my father's ARRL Handbooks. Something like a late '50's edition"
"You want to put them on the air again, for me? " I asked
"Why not.... Your mother won't call us to dinner for at least an hour...."
".....here, take your glass of wine and bring that transmitter out to the back porch"
So there, on a crisp Maryland afternoon, my father assembled a 1950's modulated UHF oscillator transmitter with it AC power supply, and a 6" wire stuck vertically off the chassis --for its antenna.
"Take the receiver inside and hook it up the same way" he said.
******
"What are you two up to now?" said my mother as I paraded thru her kitchen.
"You know you could help set the table..............Lauri ??..........."
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And ...?
"I hear you loud and clear! " I shouted across the house out to the back porch.
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After dinner, I asked:
"What frequency was that oscillator thing on, by the way?"
"Searches me" said my father- "we just called it '420' back then."
"Want to take a guess?"
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I love how my father can transport me back in time to a simpler era of radio.
And those ARRL Manuals are Magic Carpets.
Lauri
