[Heathkit] Wacky idea {1}

[Steve Harrison]

Don't ask me why; but way back when I was a Novice, I bought an assembled
Twoer with a half dozen crystals (called "rocks" back then) and used it for
a few months. During the summer, I must have become bored with not having a
sensitive 15m receiver and never hearing anything worth working on the 40m
Novice band during the daytime. So one day, I started taking the Twoer
completely apart. Just unsoldered and unwrapped all the wires, parts, etc.,
laid them on the op table, then carefully put the thing back together while
following the manual's assembly instructions. Surprise, surprise: it worked
the first time! I used the Twoer during the September VHF QSO Party, even
working into the Sacramento area from LA for a new Section and my best DX
on 2m until I finally got into meteor scatter years later.

I remember looking over my DX40 to decide whether to do the same with it;
but it wouldn't be any challenge, there was hardly anything to it, so I
just left it alone.

The funnest part of the Twoer "2nd-time-around" was trying to pick among
several resistors or caps of the same value to choose the one which leads
were already "custom-cut" for a specific location within the chassis. I
remember choosing the wrong one once and ending up having to splice a piece
of wire to lengthen the other resistor....

That was actually my most "complicated" Heathkit. Later, the LA store had a
close-out on HP23 power supplies and I bought six at something like $25
each. Those, I think, were the only "new" Heathkits I ever put together. No
challenge to those at all, of course! Sold a few, kept a couple, used one
or two through the years...have none left now, of course (although I know
where one is being used as the filament, grid bias and screen supplies for
a pair of 4CX250Rs on 2m).

I built a Knight-kit T-60 after I got my General; that was a fun one but
the T-60 performance was pretty disappointing on the higher bands. I
remember having to talk my Parents into believing that the T-60 would be a
"better" transmitter, with no TVI, than the DX-40. What I especially liked
about the T-60 was the very tiny size (not much larger than most
"all-American" 5-tube AM BC table radios), and having 6m included. But mine
was always oscillating on the higher bands and a great TVI-generator, far
worse than the DX-40. In an effort to make it work properly on 20m and up,
I remember taking the whole RF section apart (leaving the modulator section
alone) and rebuilding it from scratch, but to no avail: it was still
squirrely and never put out more power on the correct 6m output frequency
than when it oscillated! The decision to attempt a rebuild was influenced
by a high-school buddy whose Dad had built a T-150 that worked very nicely
on all bands. One afternoon, the buddy finally heeded my pleas and took the
cabinet off his Dad's T-150 so I could study the construction techniques,
trying to figure out what I was doing wrong with how I was putting the T-60
together. But the guy who assembled the T-150 must have been blind, a
quadraplexic, and drunk; that T-150 was put together so incredibly horribly
and poorly that even my buddy was embarrassed and insisted on putting it
back together right away. But that T-150 worked, made lots of power (it
blew out a 100-watt light bulb on 20m once), and they claimed they had no
TVI problems with it. There's just NO justice...

73, Steve Ko0U/1

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --
To subscribe: listserv at listserv.tempe.gov
and in body: subscribe HEATH yourfirstname yourlastname
To unsubscribe:  listserv at listserv.tempe.gov
and in body: signoff HEATH
Archives for HEATH: http://www.tempe.gov/archives
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --