The 2020 Fall "Classic Exchange"

W7OS - Radio Club of Tacoma working the CX

This fall's running of the Phone "Classic Exchange" will take place on Sunday, October 18 and on Tuesday, October 20. The CW "Classic Exchange", takes place on Sunday, November 1st and on Tuesday, November 3rd.


The "CX" encourages participants to use older vintage gear including any homebrew equipment, both receivers and transmitters. A unique scoring system provides bonus points for various equipment and combinations as well as encouraging 'repeat contacts' when you switch to different equipment. Some of the the CX's previous participants are shown here.

W8KM and his wonderful vintage station

No vintage gear? ... no problem! All amateurs are invited to participate and get in on the fun no matter what they are using and submit their scores.

K3MD's Heathkit AT-1 and Hallicrafters HT-37 

The CX is a low-key relaxing affair and the 'extra' Tuesday operating period should encourage a lot of midweek activity from the vast numbers of retired operators who cherish and run older gear.

Lots of combos ready at W4BOH

K6ZI, Las Vegas - WWII ARC-5s ready to go

This year's event includes a new real-time chat page where participants can announce their operating frequencies or make skeds. For complete details, check out the rules here.

If you've never entered the Classic Exchange, why not give it a try this year as it truly is a case of  'the more the merrier' ... and eastern operators, make sure to keep the porch light on for us out west!

Here Comes The '29 QSO Party!

courtesy: Lou, VE3AWA

This Saturday night as well as the next will be the annual Bruce Kelley 1929 QSO Party, otherwise known as the '1929 BK'.





Only transmitters that are 'era-appropriate' are allowed to be used. More specifically, transmitters must employ tubes that were available in 1929 or earlier, and transmitters must be self-excited. No crystals allowed! Crystals were new and largely unaffordable for most hams back in the depression days.

The year of 1929 marked a real turning point in amateur radio as governments finally cracked-down on things such as frequency stability, out of band operations and re-alignment of call districts. In short, hams were henceforth required to behave themselves and to clean up their signals and methods of operation.

courtesy: http://www.arrl.org/

Although the new rules did a lot to improve things when it came to 'signal purity', there was still a long way to go ... but the wheels of improvement had been officially set in motion. The next decade would see monumental changes in both transmitter and receiver architecture, as engineers along with some particularly gifted amateurs, strove to unlock the challenges of this relatively new technology.

If you tune across the CW bands during the next two Saturday nights, you will have the rare opportunity to hear exactly what the bands must have sounded like back in the early '30s'.

For the most part you will hear single-tube Hartley, Colpitts or TNT oscillators along with a few two-tube MOPAs thrown in. Many of them will suffer the same problems encountered by the boys of '29 ... chirp, drift, buzzy notes and frequency instability from antennas swaying in the wind.

Again this year, signals should be a little louder as well, since the previous long-time power limitation of 10W input has been increased to 25W.

The MOPAs will sound much better but some surprisingly nice-sounding signals can be heard coming from properly tuned and optimised single-tube oscillators. I recall being blown away by the lovely sounding signal I heard from such a rig when first tuning into the BK activity several years ago, only to learn that it was a self-excited Hartley using 1/4" copper tubing for the oscillator tank circuit!

The '29 watering-hole on 80m will be around 3550-3580 kilocycles (be careful not to confuse this with kilohertz!) while the early afternoon to post-sunset 40m activity will be found from 7100-7125 kc. There may even be a few on the very low end of 160m. Although many of these transmitter styles were used on 20m and higher, BK rule-makers have wisely decided not to inflict these sounds on the present populace as it would likely keep the 'Official Observers' busy for several days writing pink-slips.

This year I will leave the MOPA on the shelf and set up my Hull Hartley as I haven't used it since building the MOPA a few years ago. If it's very windy (almost assured), the Hartley will really sound like 1929!

My own Hull Hartley

You can learn more about amateur radio happenings leading up to and following the 1929 crackdown in my earlier series of 'Why '29' blogs here:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Those wishing to put something together for next year's event can find everything needed here:

Introduction To Building ... '29-Style

Building '29-Style - Part 1

Building '29-Style - Part 2

Heck, there may even be time to throw something together for the following Saturday if you have a few parts and an older tube or two ... the '27 comes to mind and is readily found in many junk boxes. Maybe you know an old-timer or two with lots of parts that could help you out.

Let's hope for good conditions for this event as the last few years have been adversely affected by geomagnetic storming. Poor propagation or not, I guarantee there will be plenty of '29ers busy calling 'CQ AWA' on the low bands.

Complete BK details are available here.

The Fall "Classic Exchange"

W7OS - Radio Club of Tacoma working the CX

This fall's running of the CW "Classic Exchange" will take place on Sunday, September 23 and on Tuesday, September 25. The following week will see the Phone "Classic Exchange", on Sunday, September 30 and on Tuesday, October 2.


The "CX" encourages participants to use older vintage gear including any homebrew equipment, both receivers and transmitters. A unique scoring system provides bonus points for various equipment and combinations as well as encouraging 'repeat contacts' when you switch to different equipment.

W8KM and his wonderful vintage station

No vintage gear? ... no problem! All amateurs are invited to participate and get in on the fun no matter what they are using and submit their scores.

K3MD's Heathkit AT-1 and Hallicrafters HT-37 ready for the CX

The CX is a low-key relaxing affair and the 'extra' Tuesday operating period should encourage a lot of midweek activity from the vast numbers of retired operators who cherish and run older gear.

Lots of combos ready at W4BOH's CX setup

K6ZI, Las Vegas - WWII ARC-5s ready to go

For complete details, see the web site announcement here.

If you've never entered the Classic Exchange, why not give it a try this year as it truly is a case of 'the more the merrier' ... and eastern operators, make sure to keep the porch light on for us out west!

The 2017 Novice Rig Round-Up!

VE7AIJ's Original Setup

There's a relatively 'new' contest in town that seems to be gathering a lot of growing interest. I'm talking about the 'NRR' or "Novice Rig Round-Up".





Harry, VE7AIJ, recently sent me a wonderful picture of his original station reproduction as used back in 1956. Hopefully Harry will be able to activate it along with countless others in the upcoming NRR.

The NRR is the brainchild of Bryan, AF4K, and Gary Johanson, WD4NKA, who developed the idea through chat on the Boatanchor and Glowbugs reflectors. They put the concept to the test in 2015 with the initial running of the NRR. Station pictures and soapbox comments from the last two runnings may be viewed here and here ... and they are truly inspirational.

With so many retired or soon to be retired 'baby boomers', there are a lot of guys out there that really enjoy recreating their original station setup, which for most U.S. hams, would have been their Novice station. There is also a huge group of 'not so old' hams that just enjoy refurbishing or homebrewing rigs from the 50's and putting them on the air ... the NRR will present another great opportunity to get on-the-air and light up those filaments once again.

As indicated on the NRR website, this is "more of an EVENT than just a typical contest ... once again taking our OLD ham radios off the shelf and putting them to use again! "

courtesy: http://novicerigroundup.com/

Although the NRR strongly encourages participants to use era-appropriate 'Novice type gear', using a modern rig will not prohibit you from joining in on the fun ... as well as give you a chance to hear how some of these old classics sound on CW.

The full rules are available on the dedicated NRR webpage. You will also find information there for Yahoo's NRR Group as well as the Facebook link. An excellent FAQ page also makes for valuable reading.

Many of the contest stations will be crystal controlled, just as they were back in the Novice days and a list of individual rockbound frequencies can be downloaded for your reference here ... those using crystal control will also tune well above and below their own frequencies for callers, a long-lost technique once required, when all Novice stations were using crystal controlled rigs ... tuning high and low should give rockbound stations better chances of success.

The NRR takes place from 0000 UTC February 18 through 2359 UTC February 26 - 9 full days, covering two full weekends.

Suggested HF frequencies are: 3550 - 3650 kHz, 3579, 7055, 7060, 7080, 7100 -7125 kHz, 21.114, 21.120, 21.150 MHz, 28.114, 28.120 MHz.

An automatic logger page has been set up for log handling as well as a 'live skeds' page to announce your frequency or to chat. Clearly, a lot of effort by the organizers has gone into this event!

Hopefully you can participate and make the 3rd annual NRR an even more enjoyable event than the first two. I know of several VE7's, including myself, that will be operating.

Harry's homebrew 6AQ5 crystal oscillator (Feb '55 Popular Electronics) and Hallicrafters S-53, pictured above, allowed him to work the world back in the amazing radio days of Cycle 19. Let's relive some of that excitement in the closing days of Cycle 24 ... in the NRR!

See You In The 'Linc'!

courtesy: WØVLZ

This coming week will provide two great opportunities to fire-up your older radios and enjoy some pleasant CW exchanges with other like-minded vintage radio users!

The Antique Wireless Association's (AWA) annual roll-out of the Linc Cundall (W2LC) Memorial CW Contest takes place this coming Wednesday and Saturday. Activity starts at 2300Z on both days and continues for 24 hours. Linc Cundall was one of the the three founders of the AWA, back in 1952, along with Bruce Kelley (W2ICE) and George Batterson (W2GB).

Over the decades, the AWA has been one of the chief proponents for the preservation of radio history, in all of its forms ... including the restoration and active use of vintage radio equipment. The AWA celebrates vintage amateur radio with several 'on-air' events each year including the premier event, the '1929 Bruce Kelley Contest'.

The annual 'Linc' CW party encourages all amateurs, including non-AWA members, to utilize their pre-1950 radios ... those designed and built before 1950 as well as homebrew reproductions of popular pre-'50's designs. Participants are encouraged to call 'CQ AWA AWA' on 160, 80 or 40m CW... suggested 'window frequencies' are outlined in the rules page which can be found here. Active discussion and promotion regarding the upcoming event may be found on Yahoo's AWAGroup reflector.

If you have an older radio (receiver or transmitter) that qualifies ... this includes any of your WWII surplus! ... hopefully you can spark-up for the event.

No older gear? Don't let that stop you from getting in on the fun, as modern rigs can be used as well, with the object of working as many AWA vintage stations as possible ... no excuses!

The above photo illustrates some of the beautiful homebrew work being done by Neil, WØVLZ, who was the chief inspiration for my own involvement in '29 activity. It will be hard to visit his amazing pages without getting hooked, so you have been warned!

My present 'vintage on-air' shelf beside the main operating table has been occupied now for several years by my Tri-Tet-Ten but with the likely demise of further 10m work, it's time to exchange it with something that I can use more often.

I hope to set up my homebrew 'Longfeller', shown below, inspired by the original design published in July, 1946 QST. My Longfeller operates on all bands from 160-10m, and should be ideal for the upcoming activity nights.

Please do consider getting on the air for this annual event, no matter what radios that you have ... it's especially nice to hear the sounds of these old radios that are fast disappearing. Events like this keep these great sounds alive.

See you in the 'Linc'!

David's Time Machine

A quick read of the latest postings on the excellent "The RadioBoard Forums" revealed a recent donation, by RadioBoard regular Graeme Zimmer, of his extensive collection of scanned vintage radio books to The American Radio History website. For those not familiar with this site, it is a superb and extensive archive of radio-related magazines and publications developed and maintained by the very dedicated David Gleason. There are probably very few radio or electronic magazines of the past that you could name that won't be found on David's website.



Graeme's donation was extensive enough to garner its own page listing and many of the book titles will ring-nostalgic to a lot of us baby-boomers that were grabbed by the magic of radio while still in our formative years.

I was delighted to see one particular author's name in the list of publications, Alfred P. Morgan ... a name that many of you might recall with fond memories. I remember checking out many of his 'Radio For Boys' series of books from the top-floor school library when still in elementary school. I longed to construct some of the simple radios but at the time I was really too young to gather the needed resources and components to put something together. I had yet to develop any of the needed skills, other than the yearning desire to learn as much as I could about these complex-looking one-tube receivers ... but it was already too late I think, and like thousands of other young 'radio boys', Alfred Morgan had planted the seed that continues to flourish some sixty years later. Thanks to Zimmer's donation of over 100 different titles from various authors, many of those hypnotic publications can now be found on David Gleason's amazing time machine!

courtesy: http://www.americanradiohistory.com/