|
New to Ham Radio?
My Profile
Community
Articles
Forums
News
Reviews
Friends Remembered
Strays
Survey Question
Operating
Contesting
DX Cluster Spots
Propagation
Resources
Calendar
Classifieds
Ham Exams
Ham Links
List Archives
News Articles
Product Reviews
QSL Managers
Site Info
eHam Help (FAQ)
Support the site
The eHam Team
Advertising Info
Vision Statement
About eHam.net
|
| Reviews Summary for Knight Kit T 60 |
|
Reviews: 13
|
Average rating: 4.7/5
|
MSRP: $69.95 in 1966
|
|
Description: 80 - 6 meter xtal controlled Novice xmtr. 60 watts from 6DQ6B sweep tube. Has low level carrier controlled AM phone capabilities as well.
|
|
Product is not in production.
|
|
More info: http://
|
|
Email Subscription
You are not subscribed to this review.
Subscribe!
My Subscriptions
Subscriptions Help
|
You can
write your own review of the Knight Kit T 60.
|
WA3FLR
|
Rating: 5/5
|
Dec 11, 2011 13:02
|
Send this review to a friend
|
|
Economical for poor kid.
|
Time owned: more than 12 months
|
I want my T-60 back :(
I have so many fond memories of my HQ-100 and T-60 novice station. Final glowed blue when keying. Smelled of electronics. What fun.
|
|
W8QEO
|
Rating: 4/5
|
Nov 21, 2010 18:45
|
Send this review to a friend
|
|
My first transmitter
|
Time owned: more than 12 months
|
In the middle of a recent nostalgia attack I decided to google “T-60” so here I am. Feeling the need to swap stories with other OTs. I have a good T-60 story so will tell it here.
I got my ham license in 1962 at the age of 16. I took classes with a local ham club that was going on the theory that “if you’re gonna go bear, go grizzly” so we went directly for our Generals. Of course the big hurdle was the 13 WPM code, and in those days, you had to go right down to the FCC office and pass the test. No one-day Tech classes back then! The FCC came to our town four times a year and, like most applicants, I flunked the code test the first time, then passed it—solid copy for the whole test—the second time.
I already had a Hallicrafters S-85 receiver The Knight T-60 looked like the best deal for my transmitter dollar so I got the kit and built it. I was no stranger to kit building by then—had built my first kit, a Knight Ocean Hopper regen receiver, several years earlier.
The T-60 was a dandy little rig on crystals and I used it for the first 4 or 5 years of hamming, mostly on 40 meter CW. Some friends and I also had a local ragchewing net on 10 meter AM and the T-60 worked OK for that, although I doubt the power output was much. At various times my antennas were a 33 foot wire out my bedroom window, a Gotham V-80 vertical, and eventually a Windom fed through a homebrew antenna tuner. The pi-network output circuits that were universal in those days would load anything.
A local surplus store had a 55 gallon drum full of FT-243 crystals and a popular Saturday morning pastime for low-budget hams like myself was sorting through that barrel of crystals looking for frequencies we could use. I learned to find crystals below the band and grind them up to a higher frequency on a piece of plate glass, using scouring powder as an abrasive.
Eventually I bought a used Heath VF-1 VFO and that’s where the trouble began. The T-60 never had an excess of stability—if you pulled the crystal and pressed the key it would self-oscillate somewhere in the general vicinity of the band. With crystals there was enough drive to keep it well-behaved, but not with the VF-1. I reasoned that the T-60 ought to work with Knight’s own V-44 VFO so I found one of those used (not nearly as common as the VF-1) and bought it. I was pretty unhappy when the T-60 didn’t work with the V-44 either.
By that time I had some homebrewing experience and in fact was in college in electrical engineering so I figured I could get to the bottom of the problem. It didn’t take long. Some poking around with my trusty grid dip meter (Knight G-30!) revealed that the driver tank circuit tuned below the band on every band! That control never did have much effect—now it was easy to see why. The grid circuit was connected to the final through a short length of shielded wire and I’ll bet the capacitance of the wire Knight was buying changed without their knowing about it. I put a fixed mica capacitor in series with the driver tuning capacitor to reduce the capacitance, and was able to find a value that worked for all bands. With the driver circuit actually tuning to the operating frequency the increase in drive was dramatic. I’ll bet the power output went up on every band, although I had no way to measure it. After that the T 60 worked with the V-44.
By that time I had developed an appreciation for “real” transmitting tubes like the 6146 and I jumped at a chance to pick up a Heath DX-40 for ten bucks at a local hamfest. It sold cheap on account of a burned out power transformer, but I found a power transformer that would work at the same hamfest. I rebuilt the DX-40 power supply with the new transformer, replacing the 5U4 with silicon diode rectifiers, giving a little higher plate voltage than the original. By that time the 6146B was available, good for 125 watts, so I plugged in one of those and had a souped-up DX-40. And I sold the old T-60.
By that time college was taking all my time and I was getting interested in VHF FM, so I never made as many contacts with my hot-rod DX-40 as I did with the old T-60. Now I’m kinda sorry I sold it—might have to buy another one on ebay.
|
|
WB2RCB
|
Rating: 5/5
|
Dec 27, 2009 06:58
|
Send this review to a friend
|
|
Still going strong!
|
Time owned: more than 12 months
|
I received my T-60 for Christmas back in 1964. With the help of my dad, we spent many evenings building the kit and getting it ready to put in my station. I was 14 at the time and had to balance my time between kit building and school work.
Received my Novice license in January of 1965 and was on the air not long after. My first QSO as a new ham was with WN1DJI whose QSL card I still have. Made many contacts on 80, 40 and 15 over the next few years on both cw and phone and the rig performed flawlessly.
Eventually it was time for a station upgrade and along came the Hallicrafters HT-46 transmitter and SX-146 receiver combo and the T-60 took it's place on the shelf. After some 44 years, the T-60 is alive and well and back with it's buddy the National NC-155 I had used in the 60's. I have pictures of my original station in 1965 and what the station looks like today on QRZ or see my website at: www.wb2rcb.com `
I am glad that I saved my original Novice station and after some minor updates both are performing again as a pair. I have used this combo on "Straight Key Nights" and it brings back many pleasant memories.
|
|
WA7VTD
|
Rating: 4/5
|
Sep 1, 2009 23:02
|
Send this review to a friend
|
|
Fun, Sturdy Parasitic Machine
|
Time owned: more than 12 months
|
Nostalgia tugs at my heartstrings to give this rig a "5," but the "4" I'm giving it is awfully generous as it is.
As with other reviewers, the T-60 was my first xmtr, although I got mine already built, from another ham who had used it with the SX-100 Mark II rcvr. I also got in the same deal for a total price of $140.00 in hard-earned newspaper delivery money. I still have the beautiful SX-100 but the T-60 was strangely stolen in 1978 from the house I shared with three college girls (um, yeah, I wish, but no, it wasn't like that, so let's get back to the review, shall we?), although the stereo, the TV and my HT-37 weren't lifted. I guess the T-60 was small, light and easy, as well as probably provoking curiosity -- especially with the Army MARS station license displayed behind it.
Anyhow, I made my first QSO -- with Don WA7VHW of Sprague, Washington -- as a Novice on 40M CW with the old T-60, at age 15. He was actually the second ham to answer my half-fast CQ; the first one who answered was lost when I forgot to change my manual T/R antenna switch back to the T-60 before replying to the other guy's call.
Upon upgrading to Advanced a year later, I longed to get on phone and I made a couple of AM QSOs on 20 meters with the T-60 using a tape recorder microphone wired through an audio matching transformer. I was told that my audio sounded as if I was trapped inside of a tin can at the bottom of a well.
I must agree with the comments that this was a fairly hearty rig. I was in Army MARS for a while and with a xtal, used the T-60 for a CW net that met on a freq. around 3260 kHz, without modifying the rig at all! I got two watts out of it at that freq and was able to QNI the Army MARS net FB.
The basic circuit of the T-60 is very similar to that of the Hallicrafters HT-40, the Heathkit DX-60 and many other low-priced, Novice-oriented xmtrs of the era.
One reviewer raised the issue of spurious emissions he characterized as 'partial subharmonics." I suspect they were not harmonics but rather parasitics. The T-60 was prone to producing prolific parasitic oscillations sufficient to aggravate every 40M CW op in town, afflicting his receiver with CLICK CLICK CLICK (but much louder than key clicks, another animal entirely) every so many kHz. but the cure was cheap and easy: install an RF choke on the final. One of my Elmers, who was about 70 at the time, came zooming up my folks' driveway on his motorcycle, and made his way down to my basement shack, whereupon he said "Our friend Ernie is getting horrible parasitics from you all up and down 40 meters." He then removed the cover from the T-60, handed me the little RF choke, pointed at the two points to be soldered and said "solder the ends of this RF choke here, and here." Good old Ernie (an 81-year-old ex riverboat radiotelegraph op who could play poker with several people, smoke a cigar and keep up conversation while simultaneously copying 60-wpm CW from his shack fifteen feet behind him) was never bothered by my sigs again and he even answered my first 40m CW CXQ every morning to say hello before he would QSY for his daily 40M CW roundtable he kept with his beloved Heathkit HW-16.
Using the buffer section of the T-60 as a tripler worked well for 15 meter operation, but I never had much luck with this rig on 10, and never tried it at all on 6.
I used to have not only the assembly/operation manual, but even an actual "service manual" for the thing.
I put together a Heathkit HG-10B VFO kit I got cheap from yet another Elmer, but never did get it working with the T-60 (probably due to my ugly, less than admirable point-to-point wiring on the HG-10B, which was my first attempt to build a Heathkit... Every so often, very rarely, though, the matching Knight VFO would turn up somewhere, but I never got one).
I just won a T-60 on e-Bay and can't wait to pair it up with the SX-100 like in the old days. If anyone knows where I can pick up a functional specimen of the Knight VFO, please let me know, via email to my callsign at arrl.net.
I also am looking for a bunch of 80M and 40M crystals.
If you have a hankering for a simple, hearty, 60-75 watt-output HF CW xmtr just for fun, you really can't go wrong with a well-built T-60.
Don't forget to add that RF choke!
73 de Kevin WA7VTD TU
|
|
W4GZV
|
Rating: 5/5
|
Jul 12, 2009 14:44
|
Send this review to a friend
|
|
My 1st novice Transmitter!
|
Time owned: more than 12 months
|
The Knight T-60 was my first Ham transmitter. I was supposed to have gotten it for Christmas but sneaked up into the attic and had most of it built long before Christmas day. My parents didn't know anything about this until I told them many years later.
The transmitter was a real work horse. I used it on 80 & 40 mtr CW with a very simple dipole antenna fed with old telephone service drop cable.
That was 49 years ago and a lot has changed in my ham shack. I was able to find another mint T-60 on QTH.com a few months ago though. I was also able to find my 1st ham receiver...a National NC-105. I have them working as good as new and treasure them as much as anything in my present day ham shack!
|
|
K1FPV
|
Rating: 5/5
|
May 26, 2008 09:40
|
Send this review to a friend
|
|
Still a great Transmitter
|
Time owned: more than 12 months
|
I first built my T-60 back in 1963 as a novice. It was a workhorse then and still works today. I often built up and operate boat-anchor stations and one I have here is a T-60 with an R-55 recceiver. This was my novice setup for a large part of my 10 months as a novice. It still puts out a good solid 35 watts on HF and about 15 watts on 6 meters.
I usually avoid 6 meters with it as it is a TVI generator with the final acting as a doubler. It is still a good HF CW transmitter.
|
|
K6SDW
|
Rating: 5/5
|
May 25, 2008 07:46
|
Send this review to a friend
|
|
Me First
|
Time owned: more than 12 months
|
We always have a special place for "Our First" .... built mine in mid-60's and great CW transmitter and when I upgraded to General always got good audio reports....Unfortunately, SSB was making its way on phone so there weren't too many hams that would talk to me on phone........so.....upgraded to HW-100
Cheers All
|
|
W8ASA
|
Rating: 4/5
|
May 25, 2008 07:13
|
Send this review to a friend
|
|
Great Little Transmitter
|
Time owned: more than 12 months
|
I built a T60 from a kit I received for Christmas in 1963. I used the T60 first in Germany as DL4WU, and worked CW as well as AM, having tons of fun, and even working JY1 with it.
When I moved back to the States in early 1965 (to Denver), I was in time for some really outlandish skip work on 6 meters, managing to work all 50 states and a few foreign countries on 6 between January 65 and June 66, using a halo on top of my garage roof. We measured 1.25 Watts output on 6 -- amazing inefficiency due to the final acting as a doubler as well. I never had a VFO to use with it, but had a huge assortment of xtals. The CW signal was pure with no chirp or click at all. AM was a "little" weak, but on 6 people said I had good audio.
In short, I have many, many fond memories of my T60.
|
|
KG6AF
|
Rating: 4/5
|
Jan 25, 2007 16:24
|
Send this review to a friend
|
|
Good Novice transmitter of old
|
Time owned: more than 12 months
|
This thoroughly decent rig served yeoman's duty in my mid-60's Novice shack. It was simple enough to be assembled by a 14-year-old, rugged enough to withstand mistuning by a radio newcomer, and it put out a decent signal.
I'm told that the screen-modulated AM was pretty weak, but having never used the AM myself, I can't say. Nor can I vouch for its ability to transmit on 6 meters. But as a crystal-controlled CW transmitter on 80 and 40, it was just fine.
|
|
N4QA
|
Rating: 5/5
|
Jul 21, 2006 15:27
|
Send this review to a friend
|
|
Needs a little help on 10 & 6
|
Time owned: more than 12 months
|
More than you ever wanted to know about using a T-60, no doubt...
Haven't actually been inside the T-60 I now have but suspect that the tubes are a little soft.
On CW, I'm getting the following output power:
80-10m about 20 watts.
6m about 3 watts.
On 80 & 40m, fundamental xtals/vfo are used.
On 20m, 7 MHz xtals/vfo are doubled in the pentode section of the 6HF8.
On 15 meters 7 MHz xtals/vfo are tripled in the pentode section of the 6HF8.
On 10 meters, 7 MHz xtals/vfo are quadrupled in the pentode section of the 6HF8.
On 6 meters 8.333...MHz xtals/vfo are tripled in the pentode section of the 6HF8.
The 6DQ6B (tv sweep tube) final amplifier works 'straight through' on 80-10 meters, but doubles the output freq of the pentode section of the 6HF8 on 6 meters.
The triode section of the 6HF8 acts as either a xtal oscillator or vfo amplifier, as desired.
The help I mentioned in the summary has to do with subharmonic energy appearing at the T-60's SO-239 coaxial output socket.
It's not so bad on 80-15m, but, on 10 & 6 meters, it is quite noticeable, even on a conventional oscilloscope, although it would more easily be quantified using a spectrum analyzer.
*So*, on 10 meters, I place an ICE model 411 bandpass filter between the T-60's output socket and my antenna tuner (Icom AH-4). And, on 6 meters, I use the ICE model 412 bandpass filter.
These bpfs stop subharmonics and harmonics cold.
Also own ICE bpfs for 80, 40, 20 and 15 meters, but, use them mostly with the Meissner Signal Shifter, model EX.
An additional benefit of these bpfs is that they also work great with *receivers* of less than decent selectivity, especially when they are used with larger antennas, such as my 80m endfed wire.
I enjoy the Knight-kit T-60 even more these days than I did as a Novice in '65/66 !
72.
Bill, N4QA
|
|
If you have any questions, problems, or suggestions about Reviews,
please email your Reviews Manager.
|
|
|
|
|
