Thanks Dad!

When I was nine-years old in the fall of 1957, I travelled to a small community in northern Washington state. At that time, square-dancing was a popular activity and my parents were attending an evening dance in the local community center. It didn't take long for me to become bored and wander down the street to the local drug store. In those days, the streets were not as scary for young kids as they are today, sadly.

A magazine called "RADIO-TV Experimenter" soon caught my eye. I decided to buy it to read while waiting for my parents to finish and begin the drive home. I was fascinated to learn of an activity called "shortwave listening". I read and re- read the article several times. It spoke of being able to hear radio broadcasts from around the world and was heavily illustrated with pictures of QSL cards and lists of foreign broadcast frequency schedules.

The next day I told my father about the article and that it sounded pretty interesting to me. He told me that there might be an old radio in the back of my grandfather's barbershop in downtown Vancouver.
The next Saturday morning we went downtown to check....sure enough...sitting unplugged in the back corner was a dusty old wooden radio!

The 'dusty old radio' turned out to be a 1934 General Electric M61 cathedral model. Little did I realize just how much that Saturday morning trip to the barbershop would so profoundly affect the rest of my life.



General Electric M61

Upon returning home, the receiver was dutifully lugged up the steep stairs leading to my attic bedroom and then plugged in. To the delight of us both, it seemed to work very well but nothing could be heard on its two 'shortwave' bands. My dad said that he thought it might work better if we strung an outside antenna. Following a short trip to buy some copper wire and two white ceramic insulators, he was soon scurrying along the steep peak of our house with hammer, wire and insulators in hand!

I'm sure you can imagine the rest of the story. I was almost immediately mesmerized by the beautiful orange glow of the radio's backlit dial. It was truly a thing of exquisite design and a prime example of the perfect union of form and function.

I was soon delighted to discover that a slight pull on the central tuning knob produced a velvety slow tuning rate on the main dial. And stations! Stations everywhere I tuned....yes, this was the stuff I had been reading about! For me, 'sunspots', 'solar cycles' or the 'Heaviside Layer' were still foreign terms as I began to explore this new (to me) world of radio.

My attic bedroom soon became the 'listening post' and after a few months of careful tuning and late- night listening, my logbook began to fill with stations from around the world! Friday and Saturday nights became the favorite times of the week for me as it meant that I could stay up late....tuning and hunting for new catches.

Little did I know at the time that I was listening at the peak of 'Solar Cycle 19'. The mother of them all. I had simply assumed that shortwave radio was always like this and didn't know that propagation would never be any better than it was right then.

 

The big one

My first QSL was received in due time, the same one shown here, from 'Switzerland Calling'. It arrived in a thick vanilla-colored envelope stuffed with Radio Switzerland information and literature describing their beautiful country. I still remember the smell of the envelope, or its ink, to this day. But imagine.... people in Switzerland sending me, now a ten-year old kid, stuff like this. It must be important. I was hooked.

My 1st QSL

My interest slowly turned to amateur radio after discovering some local DXers on 20m AM phone. One of them was George, VE7ALE, a detective with the Vancouver police, with a thick British accent. I could hear him working ZL's every Friday night but as hard as I listened, I could never manage to hear the weaker signals from down under.

For me, this was the beginning of what became a wonderful life-long hobby that I am privileged to still enjoy today....and it all started with an understanding, encouraging father....and a Saturday morning trip to the barbershop. Thanks a million Dad!

A Simple 630m CW Transmitter by GW3UEP

I put one of these together yesterday and have had it on the air as a beacon on 475.044 KHz. As you can see, it is a perfect example of the 'ugly construction' technique...or perhaps a newer variant more appropriately named 'really ugly construction'.

The design for this transmitter, and several others, is published on the GW3UEP Web site and this particular circuit can be found here.

The results of my testing mirror almost exactly those claimed by the author with only a small variation. Using an IRF540 switching FET in Class-E, I am measuring drain current of 2.33A at 12.77VDC, which calculates to an input power of 30W. Measured output into a 47 ohm load is 98Vp-p or 25.5W, for an overall amplifier efficiency of 85%.

One thing that I noted on this one, as well as an earlier mock up last year was the need for slightly more inductance in coil L2. As can be seen from the picture, I have fine-tuned L2 by inserting a ferrite bar slightly inside the form. Once I begin the final build I will measure the newer inductance and rewind the coil.  As well, I'd like to test this at 24VDC to see what changes might occur with higher drain voltage.

The drain and gate waveforms are shown here and from what little I know about class-E circuitry, it looks as though things are still not ideally optimised but are close. Dimitrios, VK1SV, has also published a nice tutorial on his class-E homebrew experience.

Perhaps cleaning up stray capacities and unwanted couplings in a more 'cosmetic' version will help. Running key down for several minutes seems to generate almost no heat in the FET so the larger heat sink is probably not needed.

While testing last night, I used the little transmitter to have a nice cross band QSO with VA7FC on Vancouver Island, about 150km away.

With the small parts count and inexpensive crystal (50 cents), this transmitter could probably be built for $10 or less, making a nice starter rig for 630m work.

Over The Horizon DX....On Lightwave

I was excited to read an article by Roger, G3XBM, in the June issue of Radcom magazine describing his experiments in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) lightwave work. Last fall, VE7CA, VE7BDQ and myself built LED lightwave stations, mainly due to Roger's inspirational blogs describing the development and progress of his own lightwave system. Our local work resulted in two exciting CW contacts between myself on Mayne Island and VE7CA in North Vancouver, about 54km away and on the other side of Georgia Strait. 

Our Lightwave QSO Path

The details of our system and contacts will be the subject of an upcoming article in 'TCA', the Radio Amateurs of Canada journal.




Although VE7BDQ did not build a transmitter, we did have one unsuccessful NLOS attempt, hoping to catch a signal from the bottom of a somewhat unstable cloud layer.

Roger's article describes the results of his low power 'clear air scattering' tests and levels of signal detection at varying distances. His success in this mode has given me renewed hope of eventually being able to cross the water via this method and maybe even doing it without the cloud layer!

Our systems used a 556 tone generator to produce a keyed 600Hz tone, but I think Roger's approach of using a crystal oscillator / divider as the tone source will likely produce a much more stable signal and one that would be easier to spot on a slow speed Argo or Spectran screen, as any attempts would be run in slow speed CW QRSS mode.

For more on Roger's excellent lightwave activities and NLOS experiments, visit G3XBM's Lightwave Blog pages that cover these topics.

If there are any others in the Vancouver lower mainland region who might be interested in joining in the lightwave fun, we would welcome your help....this is one activity where "the more, the merrier" is surely the case!

Planting Homebrew Seeds

Over the past few months, several members of Yahoo's "qrp-tech Group" have been busy homebrewing their own versions of "The Ugly Weekender", a QRP transceiver originally designed by Wes, W7ZOI, and published in QST of August, 1981.
It has become one of the Groups "sandbox" projects, spearheaded by Chuck, K7QO.

A recent group post by Chuck has planted a new seed for the next sandbox project and it seems to be garnering much discussion:

My idea for the AM BC all transistor radio build is to
celebrate the 60th anniversary of the transistor radio.
Let's not over engineer this and get crazy. BC band only.
4 to 7 transistors. No ICs, since we didn't see ICs in the
early radios and they were a while away from being used.

This is a volunteer project, i.e. you pick and choose
what you want to do. You can use modern components
for your build, but I'm personally going with the simpler times.
By that I mean I'm not going to use an LM386 or other audio
IC and no NE602 mixer, etc.

If you google for 'AM broadcast transistor radio', you will get
link to a large number of schematics. For now, let's all wade
through them and in Sept see if we can find one that might
be a good group project to share and build together. This
for the purpose of learning something and sharing information.
Help the new guys and girls who want to try something different.

I have some 455KHz ceramic filters that I plan on using in place
of the IF transformer. The old radios used a 600 ohm CT audio
transformer to get down to 8 ohms for speakers. I'm going with
ear buds, so may get around the weight of the transformer. Time
will tell.

So, start doing some research to see what gets your interest in
doing this. I know that we all tune into the AM band, it will not be
like the old days of the old programming. Probably a lot of
religion, conspiracy nuts and other talk shows.....

------------------

As a side effect of this project:

Transistor theory books. I found vol 1 and vol 2 of the Sams
series. I put these on < http://www.archive.org > Just go
to the site and search for 'transistor fundamentals' and you
will see Vol 1 by Robert J. Brite and Vol. 2 by Charles A. Pike.
There is a Vol 3 and Vol 4, but I have had no luck in finding them.
Let's hope that some one will put them at archive.org for
preservation. Let us know.

We could, on the side of the AM build, get a study group to
help newbies learn transistor theory and circuits for building
some simple stuff. Wind up with some useful toys and learn
all about transistors in the process. That is if we get enough
interest.

Is there a good online course on transistor theory with labs?
There are some newer books on transistors that might be
candidates for a study group.

chuck, k7qo



Early Transistor Ad - QST March 1953

The world's first 'pocket transistor' radio was sold in 1954 by Regency.



 1st Pocket Transistor

To read more about the fascinating history of the 'transistor radio' and the Regency in particular, visit Steve Reyer's Website.





It's wonderful to see such interest in the art of homebrewing and it will surely be fun to see the end results of Chuck's latest seed planting.

K0GU and the Magic

K0GU in Colorado demonstrated, once again, why 6m is so affectionately called 'the magic band'. Jay was hearing no signals at all on six on Wednesday morning, June 4th, but being a veteran 50MHz DXer, he did notice a weak video signal on 49.750KHz coming from over the pole. Until recently, when most TV stations worldwide switched to digital and abandoned the low band VHF range, TV video carriers were great propagation indicators for possible intercontinental propagation. Being right next to the band's edge, their distinctive raspy video carriers were often the precursor (and just as often 'not') to some interesting propagation. Sadly, almost all of these prop indicators are now gone, save for a few in Russia and in the middle east.

With that in mind, Jay sent a few CQ's with his beam pointing over the North Pole and at 1543Z he heard a weak reply on 50.102 CW. It was JY9FC in Amman, Jordan! What was even more remarkable was the simplicity of JY9FC's station and antenna...100W and a 2el wire beam!





6m 2el Wire Yagi at JY9FC

With many years of 6m DX under his belt, it takes something pretty unusual to get K0GU excited but this was one of those moments:

"He is not very strong but hanging in. Thanks all, I'm shaking like crazy and that doesn't happen often these days."

Amman, Jordan (courtesy Google Maps)

Is it no wonder, when the only signal on the band was from Amman....pure magic!