Poison Nuvistors from SMIRK?

[MNHopkins]

 Stopping by the PO to see Eudora Welty and mail off some signal generators, I
found a mystery package in my box -- five Nuvistors, nine sockets and some
sundries with no return address and a San Antonio postmark.

Could not have been Davy Crockett, I reasoned, and then it hit me.  They were
some sort of poison pills from SMIRK (I am #3002) sent as punishment for my
joining the new 6 Meter Club (I am #38).

But maybe not.

Perhaps some kind soul knows my passion for receive converters and that the
Nuvistor, arriving about 1960, was part of the last gasp of v. tubes.  The
still useful Ameco CN-XXX series and the upscale Tecraft Criterion converters
used them as did a proliferation of preamps.  They replaced the 6BQ7, king of
Cascode, which had in turn dethrowned the 6AK5 in VHF signal boosting. Later
6M AM Transceivers used Nuvistors, too.  The Polycoms and the Lafayette HA-460
are examples that occured to me as I stood there among the postal workers, a
posture that should cause one to be vigilant in itself.  Even the Heath SB-110
used these little metal triodes, and if I were not tea total I would drink a
toast both to them and to whomever sent them.

73 de ab5L, michael in dallas, student of Tecraft and International (ICM) ham
products and mementoes of Six Meters' Golden Age: 1957-58
Michael Hopkins
Box 226841
Dallas, TX  75222    MNHopkins at AOL.com

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