Dow Key relays ?

[Don Buska]

Dow-Key is still very muck alive.  They go by the name Dow-Key
Microwave these days.  Many of those same relays we used as hams in
the 50's and 60's are still available from them today.

73
Don N9OO





On Wed, 7 May 1997 16:01:47 -0500, Nick England wrote:

>One of the reason's to pick up an older ARRL Handbook from the
late 50'
>or early 60's is that there are lots of interesting and
illuminating
>advertisements in the back.
>
>Anyway, Dow Key was a very successful manufacturer of antenna T/R
relays
>for ham gear in the era of separate receivers and transmitters.
They
>were co-axial relays with little effect on SWR and were rated for
a
>kilowatt or more. They weren't particularly fast (no QSK) but they
>did make a satisfying ker-chunk when switching. Most often, hams
would
>have a Dow-Key relay with a 115 vac coil (because most
transmitters
>had connections to supply 115 vac when switched to "transmit") and
a
>set of auxillary contacts to mute your receiver while
transmitting.
>
>They pretty much disapppeared when SSB, VOX, and transceivers
appeared
>on the scene.
>
>By the way, for QSK operation, hams usually had an electronic T/R
>switch using a tube to clamp the receiver input when transmitter
RF
>input was present. Dow-Key made one of these too, but Johnson was
>probably the most popular commercial unit. They weren't hard to
homebrew,
>either.
>
>73 & Have Fun,
>Nick England  KD4CPL  nick at cs.unc.edu   Univ. Of North Carolina
>http://www.cs.unc.edu/~nick             Chapel Hill NC