Hi to all

I had a few of those.
They ranged in age from new to 25 yrs old.
The new one looked perfect ofcourse and the oldest one was a realy warn banger mike hihi.
1 was branded Ham International TW232
1 was branded Monacor TW232S
1 was branded Maas TW232DM
One was branded Leson TW232.

2 of those were dynamic.
But I prefered the Chrystal mikes.
The amps of the dynamic and Christal mikes are not the same though.

Normaly the only comon failure these mikes get is that the aluminium bridge on the PTT bar brakes where the Lock handle crosses the die cast aluminium PTT bar.

I think that these mikes could still be in production as I bought the TW232DM from Maas new only about 8 yrs ago.

I prefered the Christal types they were more clear and sounded better for SSB.
They do not call it Christal clear audio for nothing hihi.

Good luck with your Leson and the name TW232 brings back sweet memeries from the past.

73 Jos

Hi To you all

Try if you can hear your signal on websdr.org

Or call or mail one of your ham friends and make a sked to test your signal.

http://websdr.org/

73 Jos

Hi to you all

Any amp will do.
I had a FT920 and on AL572B no problems.
I had a FT450 and used it with a AL572B no problem.
I have a FT857D no problem on AL572B
Now have TS590 no problem on 572B

But if You are planning for something like Alpha 9500 or Acom 2000 , I would go for AL82B and keep the change to upgrade your FT450D for a bit better rig.
Though I had a FT450 for 3 yrs I didn't like the RX of the rig much on both CW as on SSB.

But there is no reason why you could not make Legal Limit with the FT450D
I am rather fond of the single 3-500 AL80B now and that would work OK with the FT450D to.
Good luck with your search for your amp.

73 Jos

Hi Ray and others.

I loved the piece wou wrote about missing the fun in ham.

I loved that the use of CW brought it back to you.
Also loved the piece of PA0BLAH though it could have been a bit more polite to SSB users.
Some hams are mixed ops. like me.

But there is one thing that is certain, a CW qso is more as a SSB QSO and using a lot of homebrew equipement makes fun only bigger.

Using the homebrew Pixie TRX and pwr amp is fun.
homebrew amp, homebrew key, homebrew El keyer, homebrew antenna, homebrew tuner.

Or using the homebrew single freq X-tal TX and the R209 army surplus as RX is also big fun.
Just using 1 freq not able to go to left or right and still make contacts with very humble junk is great fun.
It is for me as a mechanical man instead of a electronics guy fun to solder my own TX with very simple and cheap means on a piece of old print with litle ilses glued to the print.

It is very great fun to give a rprt of 5nn and if the guy asks you what is my real report come back with the remark I hear you.
No filters no S-meter just X-tal BFO and diode detector with little audio amp.  is all the rig.
So your real report is 5?9.

Hi

I bought a mini din connector and bought a very cheap RCA cable with connectors both were 1 euro each.
Cut of one RCA connectroe from the cable and soldered this cable to the mini-din.

I made 2 of these one for the FT857D and one for the FT450 they are the same and work on both rigs.
These cables still work FB after 3 yrs of use.

Hi All of you

Why not the Acom 2000?
Acom used to build amps for Alpha.

I hear great things of this amp.

maybe in the chaep range the AL82 with 2 x 3-500

I am using a AL572B and that produces more then 2 times legal limit in the Netherlands.
I do not use it much but I put in a new set of tubes 3 yrs ago and besides a set of warn tubes I had not trouble in 6 yrs of service.

Now I only put out between 400-500 PEP watts and that is enough though my antenna system for 10-40 mtrs can cope with 5 Kw PEP.

I used to use the AL572B daily but last few years only about 2 times a week for  few hours.
It does the job I needed it to do very good.

I never use it on CW because strange enough sigs on CW are always strong enough, so I can do without the amp.
A set of 4 new 572B tubes from China costed me 140 Euro's about  $200   

73 Jos

Hi Craig

I do have a TS590 and a single lever key and a Iambic paddle and a bug hooked up ll together on the TS590.

The single lever uses the TS590 build in electronic keyer.

The Vibroplex bug and the single lever key are both parrlel hooked up on the straight key entrance on the TS 590 the single lever is operated by a Pico Keyer of N0XAS.

In the TS590 your single lever can be hooked up on the big Jack connector (1/4 inch)
In the menu you can select iambic mode A or B but for me the single lever key tends to give an extra point every now and then when I use Iambic B mode.
This happens on both the TS590 as on the Pico Keyer.
So I put them both on Iambic mode A.

For your TS 590 the settings are:
Menu number 32: electric keyer mode A/B  choose for Iambic mode A or B yourself
Menu number 38: bug key function OFF.

good luck with your CW learning Craig.

73 Jos   

Hi Josh

Yes I had to readjust things to metrical sizes.
And the answer is that there will be more lobes on 10 and 12 meters.
There will be problems of direction.
But As far i can tell , these lobes and nulls won't be a to great problem.
If you run your antenna in NEC programs the nulls will be much deeper then they will be in real life.
This is due to influences of conducting materials in the neighborhood of your antenna.

And of course you can put more legs of wire on to your dipole.
There will be only one big trouble how will you know what dipole did you bring in resonance, after you tuned the antenna?

Would it not be smarter to put up another small dipole up fed with ladderline for bands like 10 t/m 15 or 17 mtrs.
That dipole only has to be 2 x 3.30 meters (2 x 11) foot or may be a bit longer.
Then you have 2 feedlines to tune the antennas separately.

I use my 2 x 7 mtr rotatable dipole for 10 t/m 40 mtrs and even get it to work on 80 mtrs but that will cost me about 10 dB due to ladderline losses and tuner losses.
So 2 x 11 Feet of copper wire should be enough for 10 t/m 20 mtrs.


I do have a wire dipole of 2 x 12 mtrs (37 feet) with lengthening spiderweb coils at each end of about 8 meters of wire (25 feet),
 I use for 80/40 mtrs.
Both antennas are fed with their own 35 ft of 600 ohm homebrew copperwire made 600 ohm ladderline

I just happen to have 2 balanced tuners so each antenna has its own tuner which are connected by a coaxial antenna switch before I hook them up to my rig.

My homebrew relay operated antenna switch even gives me the opportunity to choose on which antenna and tuner, I would like to TX and on which I would like to RX.
Switching is done automatically by the rig by TX ground.

73 Jos
   

Hi All

My favourite key is my straight key wich I inhareted from SK PZ1AP.
But I only use them very rarely.
But this very warn out cheap straight and old unknown manufactorer key is always in line of sight in the shack, just to remember my dear friend Arnold
 
My favourite key in use are my homebrew Iambic paddles.
And I never use them Iambic always operate them in the single lever way.
Second is my Vibroplex 100th ann.
Third is my Hungarian single lever key.
It is build very good and finished even better with perfect aligned contacts etc.

I think this single lever key may soon replace my homebrew paddles as my first key in use.
But still the Vibroplex is always in parallel with the El-bug and I can switch from one to another without touching one button.

Hi All

Yes in Canada everything is different.
They forgot the small m in front of the 1000 (m)W.
just kidding.
You were lucky we blew up 3 HF front-ends during fielddays.
We even blew up VHF 2 meter front end of Ft857D in use on HF, and connected to a 2 meter antenna.

Hi Pete

Yes an antenna switch creates loss, but not enough to mentione.
But you will have a much greater danger in blowing up your scanner with the 2 / 440 TX on the other end of the switch.

I trained a few hams for their licence andthat question you ask have been asked me many times before.
My advice is never do this to rigs on one switch.
The big trouble often is that you will blow up one reciever with the other transmitter.

For HF rigs my advice is even stronger.

Only one HF rig is hooked up to the antennas the others are is always connected to a dummy load.
I have seen to many blown up front ends because one rig was sending on antenna A and the other rig was recieving an antenna B.

Antenna B gave a complete overload of signal to the reciever and it blew up its front end.
We also blew up a few front ends in use with fielddays with multy ops on multy rigs.

There are solutions for that and that is use bandpass filters to prvent HF power from one rig to enter the other rigs.

A article about this just came up on Eham.
Read it here:
http://www.eham.net/articles/29774

73 Jos

Hi to you all

I have build my own noise canceler.
My findings are very simple
Yes the noise antenna is very important in  the working of noice cancelers.
The lower the noice levels on both these antennas the better these systems work.
Noise canceling is a very tricky thing to learn and to operate, but it can be very good on some types of noises.

I first trained myself with noise canceling in canceling an X-tal oscilator signal on 80, 40 and 20 mtrs.
As my canceler is homebrew I can not say anything about the MFJ but I could get rid of the oscilators completely without any loss of signals coming in from CW HF stations on the same frequencie.
The oscilator signal was about 9 and went back to 0 and gone from my rig.

It was a very absurd thing to notice.
As I heard from friends which use the MFJ , the MFJ unit is capable of reaching the same results as i did with my homebrew canceler.

Hi to all

I agree with Paul.
If you want a really good Iambic key do not go Vibroplex.

Think of Kent or Begali or lots off others.
I am now using homebrew paddles and a Hungarian single lever key.
Build quality of even my homebrew key is much higher as the build quality of Vibroplex.

i love my Vibroplex Bug though but, that has nothing to do with common sence.
Its has that wonderfull nostalgia effect, but it comes with nostalgic bad build quality.
The threads are rude and loose fitted , the construction details and quality are far of the quality keys made by Kent Schurr or Begali and even the cheap Hungarian key has a build quality far out of range of the Vibroplex.

Hi Chuck

Congrats about your nice set of rigs.
Both the IC7000 and YS590 are excellent rigs.

On good rigs belong good antennas.
In the past I have build about 100 antennas for HF.
And tried about 50 or more different designs.
They ranged from 5 el monoband yagi to 2 element halfwave verticals phased array on 40 mtrs.

The reason for homebrewing all my antennas was that my first OCF dipole from Fritzel was such a great disappointment, that I chose never to buy an HF antenna again.
Allmost all my humble and cheap homebrew antennas outperformed this Fritzel OCF dipole very easily.

The best advice I can give you is learn antenna theory and learn and study propagation on HF.

Good books are the ARRL antenna hand book and Rothhamel antenna book.

I read a load of articles here and reactions.
And i read a lot of different opinions.

If you ask 20 questions again on HF antennas you will get probably the same responses, all different opinions.

My advice is study on what bands you want to work and study what propagation there is.
Look at your space and room for an antenna and then make your choice.

My personal favourite antenna is a balanced dipole with open line feeders.

I use 2 of these.
One homebrew rotary V-dipole 2 x 22 feet with abt 10 mtrs of 600 ohm homebrew openlines.
Feedpoint is about 35 feet high.
( the V configuration is just cosmetic )

One homebrew wire dipole inverted of 2 x 38 feet with spiderweb coils of 25 feet at each end.
Also fed with 600 ohm homebrew open wire.
Feedpoint of this dipole is about 34 feet.

( I didn't have enough space so used the spider coils to lengthen the antenna)
   
The Dipole is perfect for use from 10-40 mtrs
The wire dipole is used on 40 and 80 mtrs

But most of the time I use the Dipole on 40 mtrs.

One absolute must to use balanced line fed dipoles is a good quality balanced tuner.
And these are very rare things.
Most tuners are just unbalanced tuners with an 1:4 balun at the antenna side.

And only a few balanced tuners are around to be bought that are really quality made.
I find the number one is PA0LL  double-L tuners.
A good other balanced tuner is Palstar 1500 double L tuner.
But these tuners are costly and even then you will have to learn and operate them.
But a good tuner will last about a lifetime.

Most hams using open feeders here use one of these 2 tuners or use a homebrew tuner like me.

If you have the money to spare and the place to set up a tower of course a big Stepp-IR  beam
Or other big beams and performers at about 60 feet high.
.
But these systems are very expensive, but there performance is super.

One of the biggest tips I can give you if you are making wire antennas please use copper wires.
Do not use steel wires.
Steel wires will lead to great losses.

My advice for all is.
A good antenna doesn't have to be expensive
An expensive antenna doesn't have to be good..

Hi AB2YC

For tips how to build a balanced tuner look at the website of PA0FRI.
http://www.pa0fri.com/

He has lots of info and examples.
He also build and tested a lot of different tuners and tested them in range performance and efectivity.

He also has lots of ideas about how to build a simple antenna system.

I have build a tuner that is not very well balanced but I offered a bit of balance for versatility and very large tuning range.
It will tune open lines as well as it will do coaxial fed antennas.
It will do legal limit and some more to.
I do not have problems with RF in the shack though I can run high power.
Tuner is also only inches away from my rig.

An you can do funny things with ladder line hihi.
Look at this movie my don made of the ladder line in my shack.
As you can see my homebrew ladderline is also a bit larger and thicker.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ah3DYXCwcc

However my tuner is not a project you should undertake as a start.
It became rather bulky big and although I build it realy cheap, it would be very expensive to copy.

But it does a fine job in tuning my very small and humble balanced antennas.

Good luck with your project.