The trick is to sign your call at least twice:

CQ CQ de N2EY N2EY K

(AR goes at the end of a reply to a CQ and at the end of a formal message)

73 de Jim, N2EY

Agreed! My point was that often a particular example of a kit won't live up to the design because it was built poorly.


Some history:

The Drake 2-B is actually from the 1960s, and yes it was and is very good. The SB-303 is from the 1970s and was a solid-state replacement for the SB-301 - but by all accounts wasn't as good a receiver as the '301. To really make a same-vintage comparison, the 2-B should be compared with the SB-300, predecessor of the SB-301.

Even then you don't have a fair comparison because the SB receivers can transceive with their matching transmitters (SB-400, SB-401) but the 2-B has no matching transmitter.

Doesn't really matter. Suppose you found an SB-301 that was well built, and discovered it was better than the 2-B in every way. Both would still be 40+ year old receivers!


I agree on all that except that there is more competition today. Back-when, there were a lot of major ham gear kitmakers - Eico, Johnson, Knight-Kit, to name three. They offered a variety of products, often very good.

But your main point is what matters. Even us old codgers who remember Heathkit as it was in its best times know that all the new folks have is a name. They have no design team, no products, no facility, no reputation.

Some hams would just LOVE it if somebody could offer some of the old kits again. Trouble is, many of the parts used back then are unobtanium in large quantities today. Many of the designs wouldn't pass muster with FCC today. Safety and liability concerns with some products would give the legal beagles nightmares. Some of them could undoubtedly be redesigned around 2013 reality - but the overall cost would be prohibitive.

If somebody wants the Heathkit experience in 2013, all they need to do is buy an Elecraft kit. Except that the Elecraft stuff is much better performing!

Or they can do what some hams have done: Find an old Heathkit, take it all apart, clean up the good parts and replace the bad, then build it again. A lot of work, but so what?

73 de Jim, N2EY

IMHO, the real appeal of the converter/BC-453 approach is its simplicity and low cost. It is possible to extend the idea to at least 15 Mc., but that requires a converter with a lot of tuned circuits at the signal frequency in order to knock down the images. I have seen designs for a dedicated 20 meter converter using two RF stages and lots of tuned circuits, but when you reach that level of complexity it becomes the tail wagging the dog.

As a CW op, the next homebrew step up would be to build a one or two band homebrew receiver with a really sharp IF strip and good tuning dial. This can be done fairly easily using the active crystal filter ideas of W6YBR and K3CUW, plus parts from WW2 surplus ARC-5 stuff. One concept is to build an 80 meter CW-only receiver, then cover the other bands by means of a crystal-controlled converter. A lot of work but broken down into smaller pieces.

That idea goes back to the 1940s. It works but all you get is selectivity - you still need a receiver with 455 kc. IF to feed it! The converter idea makes use of the excellent stability and tuning capacitor of the BC-453 to produce a really good low-cost receiver for 160, 80/75 and 40. The earliest example I can find is in a 1948 QST.

I think it a shame that the converter/453 idea wasn't better known back-in-the-day. Many of us struggled with really marginal receivers that cost far more!

A bit of history:

In QST for December, 1947, W1DBM described "The Q5er". This was a homebrew add-on which converted the 455 kc. IF to 175 kc. and ran it through a stage of IF and four 175 kc. IF transformers to improve the selectivity, then back into the receiver's second detector. It was shown as an add-on to a BC-312.

The name derived from the fact that back in those days the HF 'phone bands could get really crowded, particularly 75 meters at night. There were plenty of strong signals but you couldn't copy them with the receivers of the day. "Q5" meant "perfect readability" on the old QSA rating scale. This was back in the days when AM was THE amateur voice mode, and when the HF ham bands were 80/75, 40, 20 and 10 meters - and 40 was all-CW. 

In QST for January, 1948, Technical Topics, W1DX tells how two amateurs (W5KWI, W6OZB) independently hit upon the idea of using the WW2 surplus BC-453 for the same job, instead of building an IF strip. Back then ARC-5 stuff was plentiful and fairly cheap, and the cheapest stuff was the units that didn't cover any ham bands - like the BC-453. For less than the cost of the four 175 kc. IF cans you could have an already-wired BC-453!

The W1DX article was titled "The Lazy Man's Q5-er" and the idea was widely used - to the point that "Q5-er" became synonomous with "BC-453".

The term was so well known that W6TNS used it in his 1956 CQ article.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Actually the phase noise of those rigs you mention is very low. They're all analog.

Here are the real reasons not to bring older rigs to a multi-multi Field Day unless you REALLY know what you're doing:

1) Many ops - both new and old - don't have any idea of how to operate them. Unless you can sit by the rig and make sure everyone who uses it knows how, be prepared for trouble with a capital T

2) Some older rigs have not-so-hot dynamic range and will have a hard time in a multi-multi setup.

3) The IF filters in some older rigs will be challenged by the contest environment

4) Some older rigs are fussy about line voltage and quality.

5) Some older rigs are bigger and heavier than their modern counterparts.

6) Interfacing to a computer can be more complicated.

This is not to say it can't be done. See QST for June 1994, page 55.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Don't end with a CQ. End with "go" or "over".


Don't waste time with signal report, it's not part of the exchange. You give the same exchange to all - you are 1B EWA to everyone.


No!

1) If the two of you are doing one operation, you use the same call regardless of who is operating. Pick either yours or his and stick with it the entire operation. 

2) The number in the category is determined by how many transmitters you have on the air at the same time. If you bring two rigs but never put both of them on the air at the same time, you are 1B. The only time you'd be 2B is if you set up two complete stations AND operate them both at the same time - which I don't recommend for a first try.


Don't worry about it too much.

Couple of things:

1) It may be better to answer CQs than to call CQ at first. Particularly if you are new at the game.

2) CW contacts are worth twice as many points, so do as much CW as you can.

3) Read the rules end to end and understand them.

4) It is better to have a good station on a few good bands than a poor station on many bands.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Sorry, I forgot about that. Boy, that's a lot of C to hit 80 meters!

At some point you may decide to wind your own coils, or find the "right" Millers, and repurpose those 3 gangers.


It's the kind of trade-off that is part and parcel of a simple design. Worth it, IMHO.


Excellent!

73 de Jim, N2EY

You have to remember a couple of things:

1) Any kit is only as good as the skill of the builder.

2) Any old rig may have problems simply from age unless it has been properly maintained.

3) Comparing what could be done with the technology of, say, the 1960s to that of, say, the 1990s is a bit lopsided.

4) Ham gear used to be a lot more expensive (when adjusted for inflation). In their time, Heathkits often offered a good value for the money.

What really killed off Heathkit was changing technology. Back when electronics required a lot of manual labor to assemble, a big part of the purchase price was the cost of paying somebody to assemble the dern thing, so a kit could save the builder big money if s/he didn't count the assembly time as a cost.

But as PC boards replaced point-to-point wiring, and automated assembly, wave soldering and finally SMT came of age, the labor cost dropped to the point where the savings became minimal for most stuff.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Ol' Never Say Die never lets facts or logic get in the way of a good rant.

AFAIK he's still around. I encountered him on another forum sometime back and he made a whole bunch of statements about ham radio in the 1960s-70s that were just plain wrong and easily disproved if you knew the facts.

So I did.

He wasn't exactly happy that somebody could answer back, and soon departed.

73 de Jim, N2EY

I have built and used the converter/BC-453 system. First example was about 1971.

If you want to use the coils you have, set the slugs to maximum inductance and use the minimum amount of added fixed capacitance that will let you peak the cap just below the bottom end of 80. Say 3.4 or 3.3 MHz.

If it were me, I'd not use the ganged-capacitor design of W6TNS. Too fussy.

You need the tuned circuits to be selective to cut down the image response. The more selective the better, even if it means repeaking every 50 kHz. The BC-453 tuning rate doesn't allow zipping through the band anyway.

73 de Jim, N2EY

From http://www.arrl.org/fcc-license-counts

the number of current unexpired FCC issued amateur licenses held by individuals on May 15, 2013 was:

Novice:            13,438     (1.9%)
Technician      347,040    (48.7%)
Technician Plus         0     (0.0%)
General          165,004   (23.1%)
Advanced         55,613     (7.8%)
Extra              131,990   (18.6%)

Total              713,085

73 de Jim, N2EY

Actually the only case I know of is the Tech-prior-to-March-1987-to-General upgrade thing. In all other cases, the licensee has to have kept the license renewed.


Exactly. On top of that is the fact that before about 1967 the Callbooks did not show license class. And except for Novices the callsign wasn't a license class indicator.


A General, because if the person had just kept renewing, that's what they'd have.


Advanced. For the same reason.



Conditionals became Generals in the 1970s. Pre-1987 Techs can get a free upgrade to General.


The problem there is that FCC has moved more and more to reduce the distinction between station and operator license - so why should they create more admin work for themselves?

There have been a number of proposals to FCC about "free upgrades" and such. One that I remember came from QCWA, and proposed that all who held Generals, Conditionals and Advanceds before November 22, 1968 should get a full privileges. The claim was that they'd had full privileges back-then, that "incentive licensing" was a failure, and so they should get back what they'd had ~40 years ago.

FCC said, in effect: "No, just take the test if you want the privileges".

---

I mean, folks - the current Extra has been earned by elementary schoolers, including at least one 7 year old! Yes, a bright 7 year old with lots of help, but still, a 7 year old! And this isn't new - back in 1948, W3OVV earned her Class B at the age of 9 - 13 wpm code, essay-question written, FCC examiner, the whole thing.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Aren't the screens powered by the same B+ that powers the plates? If not, what happens if you lose a rectifier?

IIRC, in the Valiant and the Viking 2, as well as many other BA rigs, the final plate transformer is only on when in transmit, while the low-voltage, bias, filament transformer is on whenever the rig is on. So the problem has already been addressed.

73 de Jim, N2EY

The color-changing-ink story may or may not be true. I've heard a lot of tube stories but never that one.

But IMHO, even if true, it just doesn't matter any more.

Most of the US-made tubes you see on sale today are decades old. (There are a few exceptions, of course). Many types were made over a very long period of time by a wide variety of manufacturers.

If they really did use a color-changing ink, there's no way to know for sure that it would retain the color-change feature for decades. Particularly if stored in hot, cold, and/or humid locations.

Maybe the ink changes color all by itself over time. Maybe it doesn't.

The only way to know for sure if a vintage tube is still any good is to test it.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Thanks for the kind words. I may just do that!

The one thing about inline fuse holders is that they'd be difficult to get to. I'd look for some kind of fuseholder that would be more accessible. A V2 has a hinged lid, so a couple of fuseholders on a bracket could be a no-holes mod. A DX-100B has a trapdoor lid. Valiant poses a bit of a challenge.

Another consideration is a time-delay circuit which prevents applying juice to the HV plate iron until a certain time delay has elapsed. Rigs with MV rectifiers (like the Valiant) need this!

73 de Jim, N2EY