Let me start by saying that I LIKE Ham Radio Workbench. But I found a lot in the current edition that I disagreed with. The whole panel seems to be chuckling at the older gear. And the guest is from... Flex radio. So what do you expect? The title was "Radio Rejuvenation" -- I expected something different. I thought we'd hear more about how to get old tube radios going. Instead, the focus seems to have been on how to take an old radio and stuff an RTL dongle, or a Raspberry Pi, or a Flex radio in there. Yuck.
At one point they are laughing at old magic eye tubes! They wonder if there is a digital way of recreating this tube in digital form. Sorry fellows, that has already been done:
Here are two more great museum visits by Helge LA6NCA. In these two he visits Ragnar LA1UH.
Ragnar has a lot of maritime experience, so we see a lot of older ships' radios. But his interest in the radio art is much broader and we also see a lot of other kinds of gear:
-- Wow, a "travel radio" in a suitcase from 1927. Was this the idea that later lead to the Parasets of WWII?
-- Lots of "Stay Behind" gear from the Cold War. That "Africa" receiver (that never made it to Africa!) is very interesting.
-- We see an ART-13 with autotune, ANGRC-9s, several ARC-5 command sets. I was hoping Raganar would fire up a Dynamotor, but no.
-- I spotted a Galaxy V transceiver. I have the VFO reduction drive from one of these in my homebrew 15/10 rig.
-- We see several variometers in the emergency (500kc?) maritime transmitter. I used a variometer in my super-simple ET-2 transceiver (with an N0WVA receiver).
-- Lots and lots of tubes.
Ragnar says he himself is of 1944 vintage. I hope some "stay behind" provisions have been made for these amazing museums.
Brace yourselves. This is just too much, too much radio history, too much cool stuff. We are into ham radio sensory overload territory here. The rigs, the radios, the radioactive stuff (including tubes!). Lots of Whermact stuff. A Chinese receiver. Tesla coils and Faraday shields. Much more.
Thanks to Helge LA6NCA for alerting us to this and for shooting these videos. And thanks to Jens OZ1GEO for putting this magnificent collection together. I hope they find sometplace to keep this all together so that future generations can benefit from it.
George WB5OYP points out there is more from Jens here:
Above you can see what I picked up at the Vienna Wireless Society's 2024 Winterfest Hamfest.
-- On the left in the blue box is an MXM Industries SuperRX/TX 40 transceiver. It is a kit from a Texas company. Superhet receiver with IF at 455 kHz. Crystal controlled CW transmitter on 7040 kHz. The oscillator works, but so far no receive signals. I will have to troubleshoot. Does anyone have a schematic?
-- Behind the MXM there is a nice box marked "Diode Detector" I opened it up and there is just a solid state diode and a 50 ohm resistor to ground. Box may be useful.
-- I got a couple of books: "Weekend Projects" 1979 from ARRL, and "A History of QST -- Volume 1 Amateur Radio Technology 1915 - 2013" 2013 from ARRL.
-- On top of the Weekend Projects book you see a "Crystal Holder" from Gross Radio of New York City. W1UJR has some good history on this company: https://w1ujr.com/written-word/gross-radio-company-circa-1931/ This device seem to be intended to hold in place a raw piece of quartz! Cool.
-- To the right of the books there is a serious-looking VFO. One dollar! Deal! It is a CB VFO, but the markings say it puts out 5.44 to 5.99 MHz. So it should be useful. The dual speed dial is very nice.
-- Above the VFO is a nice step attenuator from the "Arrow Antenna" company of Loveland Colorado.
-- Further to the right are some Electric Radio and Antique Wireless Association magazines that Armand WA1UQO gave me. Really nice. The AWA mags have a very thoughtful piece (warts and all) on Jean Shepherd. And the ER pile has an article by Scott WA9WFA that mentions my work on the Mate for the Mighty Midget receiver. Thanks again Armand!
-- I also got some ADE6+ surface mount mixers. The price was right!
My journey into the world of amateur radio began in a very primitive way. My first "rig" comprised of a spark-gap transmitter and a coherer based receiver. A coherer is a primitive radio signal detector that consists of iron filings placed between two electrodes. It was popular in the early days of wireless telegraphy.
Spark transmitter (using a car's ignition coil to generate high-voltage sparks):
Coherer based receiver (using a doorbell for the "decoherer" mechanism):
When I keyed the transmitter, a high voltage arc would appear at the spark-gap and this produced (noisy) radio waves. The signal would be received by the iron-filings coherer on the other side of the room. A coherer is (usually) a one-shot receiver. You have to physically hit it to shake the filings and bring the detector back to its original state. That's what the doorbell hammer did. It would hit the coherer every time it received a signal. It amazed me to no end. A spark created in one room of my house could make the hammer move in another room. Magic!
Soon after this project, I started experimenting with *slightly more refined* crystal detectors and crystal radio circuits. As most of you would know, these amazing radios don't require any batteries and work by harnessing energy from radio waves. I guess these simple experiments instilled a sense of awe and wonder regarding electromagnetic waves, and eventually, this brought me into the world of amateur radio in 2015.
My main HF rig is an old ICOM IC-735. The only modification on this is radio is that it uses LED backlights (instead of bulbs):
With space at a premium in San Francisco, the antenna that I have settled for is an inverted vee installed in my backyard (and it just barely fits). I made the mast by lashing together wooden planks. For this city dweller, it works FB:
I have recently gotten into CW, and it has definitely become my mode of choice.
I'm a self-taught electronics enthusiast and I love homebrewing radio circuits. I'll be sharing more info about them soon.
Thanks for checking out my page. I hope to meet you on the air!
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