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Showing posts with label radio history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label radio history. Show all posts

Thursday, March 7, 2024

The Wizard of Schenectady -- Charles Proteus Steinmetz

Such a beautiful article.   Ramakrishnan VU2JXN sent it to me.  It reminded me of how puzzeled we were when we found "Schenectady" on old shortwave receiver dials, amidst truly exotic locations.  Rangoon!  Peking!  Cape Town!  Schenectady?   Obviously this was due to General Electric's location in that New York State city.  But reading this article, I am thinking that the presence of Charles Proteus Steinmetz had something to do with it. His informal title (The Wizard of Schenectady)  confirmed that we have been right in awarding similar titles to impressive homebrewers. 

Here is the Smithsonian article that Ramakrishnan sent. 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinmetz-the-wizard-of-schenectady-51912022/#ixzz2lRMjrfit

And here is a link to a PBS video on Steinmetz: 

https://www.pbs.org/video/wmht-specials-divine-discontent-charles-proteus-steinmetz/

Here is a SolderSmoke blog post about "Radio Schenectady":

https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2020/07/radio-schenectady.html


Wednesday, March 6, 2024

N6ASD Builds a Zinc-Oxide Negative Resistance Transmitter (and a Spark/Coherer rig)


I saw this video and post on Hackaday this morning:


I got the fellow's callsign from  his Morse CQ.  
It is N6ASD in San Francisco. 

Check this out from his QRZ page: https://www.qrz.com/db/N6ASD

My journey into the world of amateur radio began in a very primitive way. My first "rig" comprised of a spark-gap transmitter and a coherer based receiver. A coherer is a primitive radio signal detector that consists of iron filings placed between two electrodes. It was popular in the early days of wireless telegraphy.

Spark transmitter (using a car's ignition coil to generate high-voltage sparks):

Coherer based receiver (using a doorbell for the "decoherer" mechanism):

When I keyed the transmitter, a high voltage arc would appear at the spark-gap and this produced (noisy) radio waves. The signal would be received by the iron-filings coherer on the other side of the room. A coherer is (usually) a one-shot receiver. You have to physically hit it to shake the filings and bring the detector back to its original state. That's what the doorbell hammer did. It would hit the coherer every time it received a signal. It amazed me to no end. A spark created in one room of my house could make the hammer move in another room. Magic!

Soon after this project, I started experimenting with *slightly more refined* crystal detectors and crystal radio circuits. As most of you would know, these amazing radios don't require any batteries and work by harnessing energy from radio waves. I guess these simple experiments instilled a sense of awe and wonder regarding electromagnetic waves, and eventually, this brought me into the world of amateur radio in 2015.

My main HF rig is an old ICOM IC-735. The only modification on this is radio is that it uses LED backlights (instead of bulbs):

Icom IC 735

With space at a premium in San Francisco, the antenna that I have settled for is an inverted vee installed in my backyard (and it just barely fits). I made the mast by lashing together wooden planks. For this city dweller, it works FB:

I have recently gotten into CW, and it has definitely become my mode of choice.

I'm a self-taught electronics enthusiast and I love homebrewing radio circuits. I'll be sharing more info about them soon.

Thanks for checking out my page. I hope to meet you on the air!

73,
N6ASD

 

Monday, February 19, 2024

Jean Shepherd has Trouble with his Heising Modulator (and his date)


This is probably Jean Shepherd's best program about homebrew ham radio.  It is about how we can become obsessed with the problems that arise with equipment that we have built ourselves, and how normal people cannot understand our obsessions.   

I posted about this back in 2008, but I was listening to it again today, and quickly realized that it is worth re-posting.   Realize that Shepherd's Heising modulation problems happened almost 90 years ago.  But the same kind of obsession affect the homebrewers of today.  

Note too how Shepherd talks about "Heising" in Heising modulation.  Heising has an entire circuit named for him, just like Hartley, Colpitts, and Pierce of oscillator fame.  Sometimes, when I tell another ham that my rig is homebrew, I get a kind of snide, snarky, loaded question:  "Well, did you DESIGN it yourself?"  This seems to be a way for appliance operators to deal with the fact that while they never build anything, someone else out there does melt solder.  They seem to think that the fact that you did not design the rig yourself makes your accomplishment less impressive, less threatening.  This week I responded to this question with Shepherd's observation -- I told the enquiring ham that my rig is in fact homebrewed, but that I had not invented the Colpitts oscillator, nor the common emitter amplifier, not the diode ring mixer, nor the low-pass filter.  But yes, the rig is homebrew, as was Shepherd's Heising modulator.    

Guys, stop what you are doing. Put down that soldering iron, or that cold Miller High Life ("the champagne of bottled beer") and click on the link below. You will be transported back to 1965 (and 1934!), and will hear master story-teller Jean Shepherd (K2ORS) describing his teenage case of The Knack. He discusses his efforts to build a Heising modulated transmitter for 160 meters. He had trouble getting it working, and became obsessed with the problem, obsessed to the point that a girl he was dating concluded that there was "something wrong with him" and that his mother "should take him to a doctor."

This one is REALLY good. It takes him a few minutes to get to the radio stuff, but it is worth the wait. More to follow. EXCELSIOR! FLICK LIVES!

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Some Great Reading Material -- Links to Radio Publications

 


My fellow Hambassador Dave WA1LBP sent this to me today (from Taiwan, I think).  Lots of great  ham radio and SWL info in these many publications.  The one that caught my eye was "The Modulator,"  an ARRL publication done by the 2nd District in the 1920s.  Really interesting.  I will sent this to Lyle, W7QCU who has an interest in radio from this era.   


Thanks Dave!  73! 

Sunday, January 14, 2024

QRP Trigger Warning! 500 kW from WLW (great video)


Wow, this video will make you appreciate the simplicity of QRP! 

My favorite part was when they required the use of "dark welding goggles" for whoever was charged with a visual check of  the tube filaments.  

Thanks to Hack-A-Day for alerting me to this wonderful video. 

Friday, November 24, 2023

A FREE Book from the Early Days of Ham Projects with Transistors: The CK722 -- The Device that Got Pete Juliano Started in Homebrew

 
Pete N6QW sent this amazing book to me this morning.  Pete wrote: 

"The book was the size of a Notebook and had a gray cover. I built some of the projects like the CPO. If you had a CK722 then you were there."

You can get the book for free here: 


 http://n4trb.com/AmateurRadio/RaytheonTransistorApplications/Raytheon%20Transistor%20Applications.pdf 



The impact of the CK722 on Pete Juliano, on ham radio, and eventually on SolderSmoke was quite profound. Back in 2015,  I wrote about this on the blog

I knew Pete had a lot of experience with transistors, but I didn't realize just how far back this experience reaches.  Pete writes, "The March 2015 issue of QST  had an article about a 1953 transistor transmitter project which was really advanced technology since the transistor was only invented about 5 years before that time...  About 1953 at the age of 11, I built my first solid state audio amplifier using the venerable CK722 from Raytheon. The transistor did look a bit strange in that cool blue cube shape with a red dot on the side to identify the collector. What a joy and surprise to me that it worked the first time power was applied...  It  was the CK722 that in large measure started me on a life’s work and engagement in a wonderful hobby. That CK722 path also led me to designing and building a QRP solid state version of the Collins KWM2 which I call the KWM-4."  I asked Pete why an 11 year-old kid in 1953 felt compelled to build a solid state audio amp.   The answer is very cool:  Pete's father had introduced him to crystal radios at age 8.  Pete wanted an amplifier for his crystal set, but his dad was worried about him building high voltage tube gear.  So that's how Pete got his VERY early start with transistors.

We are really lucky to have Pete Juliano sharing his vast tribal knowledge with us.

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

You can see a complete set of SolderSmoke posts about the CK722 here: 

Wikipedia has a nice article on the CK722.  The design contest Raytheon sponsored would be the kind of contest we could really get into!  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CK722

Thanks Pete.  And thank you Raytheon! 

Thursday, November 16, 2023

The Grid Leak Detector -- Follow-up from Yesterday's Post on the Whole Earth Catalog's "Hippy" One Tube Receiver

Click on image for a better view
When I first looked at it in the Whole Earth catalog circuit, I thought it was a regen.  But a commenter correctly questioned this conclusion.  I remembered the grid leak circuit (WN2A provided more info in the comments).  This morning I found a Wikipedia page that explains it all very well.  I especially like the description of how this detector works both with small signals in the "square law" range of the tube, and with larger signals in the linear range of the tube.  The history of the discovery of the need for the large resistor is also very interesting.  I remember building FET amplifiers and finding that they would -- after time -- shut down.  This would happen as charge built up on the gate.  I had neglected to include the normal 100k ohm resistor (that would "leak" this charge to ground).  Once I put this resistor in, the amp worked fine.  

Here is the Wikipedia article:  


Sunday, October 15, 2023

Spy Rigs, Para Sets, Bugs, and Enigma Machines -- Dr. Tom Perera W1TP (video)


This is a really amazing presentation by Tom Perera W1TP to the Fairlawn (NJ) Amateur Radio Club. 

There is so much great info in this presentation.  Some of the highlights for me: 

-- The U.S. Civil War telegraphic (wired) spy set was just mind blowing.  I had never heard of this.  

-- The way the Nazis transmitted a signal 1 kc off the BBC frequency, so that Germans who tuned their Nazi-issued receivers to the BBC could be detected by neighbors (from the resulting 1 kc tone!) and turned in to the Gestapo.  

-- "Things don't land gently when dropped by parachute." Indeed.  This was a reminder of the courage of the young women who parachuted into Nazi-held territory during WWII.  Like Paulette.  It was great to see her with her Paratrooper wings on.  AIRBORNE!  And the picture of the operator with the bicycle generator was of Virginia Hall.  See: https://www.npr.org/2019/04/18/711356336/a-woman-of-no-importance-finally-gets-her-due  That portrait hangs in the hallway of the National War College. 

-- How they put the schematic of the PRC-5 right into the box.  Great idea.  But it had a terrible receiver.  One of the schematics showed a 455 kc IF and a BFO.  So they sent in superhets, not just regens. 

N2CQR operating the Para Set of G3ROO around 2009

This video makes me want to build a Para Set. 

Thanks a lot to Tom W1TP and the Fairlawn ARC. 

Saturday, August 19, 2023

Valveman -- The Story of Gerald Wells


Don't be deterred by the annoying test patterns at the start of this video.  Just skip past them.  The rest of the video is quite good.  Or you could just click on this link and avoid the first 83 seconds of test pattern:  https://youtu.be/Y8w6iwaAGJ4?t=83

Gerald Wells has been mentioned on this blog before, but I don't think we've ever presented the full documentary on this fellow.  Here it is.  Gerry is clearly one of us: a radio fiend, obsessed (as he admitted!) with wireless, a victim of THE KNACK.   

George WB5OYP of the Vienna Wireless Society got to meet Gerald Wells and visit his museum. George alerted me to this video.  Tony G4WIF also was able to visit Gerry and his museum. 

The documentary is full of interesting stuff, and is, in itself, a Knack Story.  Wells mentions the Crippens murder so well described by Eric Larson in "Thunderstruck."  It was this crime that brought radio to the center of public attention.  

Thursday, April 20, 2023

Artie Moore and the Titanic


I had never heard of Artie Moore, but his is a very interesting story from the earliest days of radio. 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artie_Moore

https://www.facebook.com/groups/118053768802799



Thursday, February 23, 2023

Early (1912?) Ham Station

 
Perhaps a bit overdressed by today's standards, but he's got a familiar look on his face.  Confidence and pride in his rig, and a steely determination to make contacts with it.  

If you zoom in you can see the crystal and the cat's whisker. 

More on this here: 

http://uv201.com/Photo%20Pages/ham_3.htm?fbclid=IwAR10Lbi2CAsYeiBDUjWb5KIQrh1SJVGwDyL2_1ZrkPk1VbllAUbeahwxsAI

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

The Transistor at 75, and the Raytheon CK722 (Pete's First Transistor)

 

https://www.eejournal.com/article/the-transistor-at-75-the-first-makers-part-1/

Part 4 is especially interesting to us because of the N6QW-CK722 connection: 

     Raytheon: Raytheon started making vacuum tubes in 1922. During World War II, the company made magnetron tubes and radar systems. Raytheon started making germanium-based semiconductor diodes in the 1940s and, just months after BTL announced the development of the transistor in late 1947, started making its own point-contact transistors using germanium salvaged from Sylvania diodes. After attending the 1952 BTL transistor symposium and licensing the alloy junction transistor patents from GE, the company quickly started making germanium transistors including one of the most famous transistors of that generation, the CK722, which was simply a rejected commercial CK718 transistor with downgraded specs for the hobby market. (Jack Ward has created an entire museum around the Raytheon CK722 PNP transistor.) Raytheon exited the semiconductor business in 1962.

Here are all of our blog posts on the CK722: 

https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/search?q=CK722

Here is our post on Pete Juliano's CK722: 

https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2015/03/pete-juliano-homebrwing-with.html


Is this the Origin of the Term "Ham" Radio?

Click on the image for a better view

The timing (1895) and the context (railroad telegraphy) seem about right.  But other etymologies are out there.  Lexicographer Steve Silverman KB3SII is on the case.  What do you guys think?  Are the roots of "ham" radio in railroad telegraphy? 


Monday, February 13, 2023

The Infinite Impedance Envelope Detector (done with an FET)


Recently a fellow ham claimed that "envelope detection" doesn't really exist, and that the standard "rectification and filtering" explanation of how envelope detectors work (going back to Terman and beyond) is wrong.  But here is a good demonstration of the envelope detection of an AM signal.  It uses an infinite impedance detector built around an FET.  As Baltic Lab notes in the video above, the action is essentially the same as what happens with a vacuum tube:  The device is biased at cut-off.  The negative portion of the ENVELOPE is discarded.  The positive portion of the ENVELOPE is passed through the device and filtered.  What remains is the audio -- the same audio frequency that modulated the carrier.  ENVELOPE DETECTION.  

I was thinking about how fortunate we were that this form of detection was possible. Fessenden used what were in effect diode detectors to envelope detect very early transmissions of radiotelephony. If simple envelope detection via rectification had not been possible, radiotelephony might not have been invented as early as it was. 

Thursday, January 26, 2023

"The Electrical Experimenter" -- A Treasure Trove of Inspiration

Oh this is really phenomenal.  Nick "the Vic"  M0NTV is on the mend from some routine surgery.  While mending he found this 1915 issue of Hugo Gernsback's "The Electrical Experimenter."  I just spent a few minutes quickly going through it and I can see that this is a treasure trove that could keep us -- the modern day electrical experimenters -- busy for a long time.  

-- We see Signor Marconi in Italian military uniform (I never saw that before).  

-- There is mention of successful DX reception of the station in Arlington Va. (just down the road from me).  

-- There is a an article about the radio station of T.O.M -- Hiram Percy Maxim.  

-- There are detailed maps of Mars, complete with the canals. 

And there is a lot more.  

Above all, I think what stands out from this magazine is the homebrew spirit,  the notion that we can and should build our rigs ourselves, and seek to understand them. 

Below is the whole magazine.  Please take a look and use the comment section below to point us to passages of interest to the electrical experimenters of today.  

Thanks Nick.  Your e-mail came during a discouraging period filled with a few "tales of woe."  The magazine really lifted my spirits.  

Here it is: 

http://soldersmoke.com/EE-1915-10.pdf 

Monday, December 26, 2022

A Blast from the Past: TR on Homebrewing (sort of)

 Theodore Roosevelt

"It is not the critic who counts; not the ham who points out how the homebrewer stumbles, or where the builder of rigs could have built them better. The credit belongs to the ham who is actually at the workbench, whose hands are scarred by solder and metal and glue; who strives valiantly; who errs, whose amp oscillates again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to build his rigs; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of homebrew  achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid operators who neither know victory nor defeat.”


Sunday, December 25, 2022

Some Direct Conversion Receiver History

Here is the article by Wes Hayward and Dick Bingham that started it all:  

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-DX/QST/60s/QST-1968-11.pdf

page 15 

Here's a discussion by Wes of the original project: 

https://www.n5dux.com/ham/files/pdf/Direct%20Conversion%20Receivers%20History%20-%20W7ZOI.pdf

Here is an article about DC receiver in phasing rigs by Gary Breed K9AY: 

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-DX/QST/80s/QST-1988-01.pdf

page 16

Roy Lewallen W7EL's Optimized transceiver (with a direct conversion receiver): 

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-DX/QST/80s/QST-1980-08.pdf

page 14

Jerry KI4IO on Building a DC Receiver

https://groups.io/g/qrptech/message/17

Michael Black wrote on March 5, 2014 at 3:54 PM

Isn't it a bit dated?

When "direct conversion" receivers came along in 1968 (the concept existed before, just not the name), it was to build simple receivers. They took over from regens (which of course for the purpose of CW and SSB, were "direct conversion"), and kind of bumped simple superheterodyne receivers out of the magazines.

And they were easy to build, so long as the meaning of the dots were standard, but good performance was elusive. Endless articles about better mixers or more front end selectivity, and still the same basic results The Heathkit HW-7 comes along, and endless mods to that, but still no perfection.

Slowly the move was back to simple superhets, especially with some of the early seventies ICs intended for radio, and then ladder filters came along (actually they came early at least by 1974 from the UK and/or France, but while they got mention in North America early-ish, it took some years before the KVG filters were pushed aside and ladder filters got the spotlight).

And then wham, in the mid-eighties someone caught on. The problem with direct conversion receivers wasn't the mixer (well not once it was a balanced mixer) or lack of front-end selectivity, it was the matter of properly terminating the mixer. The problems that had been there all along were gone. And direct conversion receivers started their climb to being complicated receivers.

I guess it was that receiver by Gary Breed in QST circa 1986 with diode balanced mixers and termination that changed things. A new concept, but not really, I remember an article in QST in 1974 where a DBM diode mixer for VHF was properly terminated, and yet the concept went no further until a decade later.

Actually, I think there is a tiny bit about mixer termination in "Solid State Design for the Radio Amateur" but it never went so far as to say "this is what we need".

Or perhaps that tiny transceiver by Roy Llewellyn in QST was the first, I cant' remember. It certainly used a diode mixer with termination for the receiver.

And that set the stage for Rick Campbell's various receivers, all counting on termination of the mixer.

The ideas can often be there, but not applied because technology doesn't allow it yet, or just not looking that far beyond this month's construction article.

Michael

Friday, December 16, 2022

Did Marconi Cross the Atlantic with a Coherer? No.

Jagadish Chandra Bose

A while back I posted the re-mastered version of the excellent "Secret Live of Machines" episode  on radio.  Among other amazing things, Tim and Rex build a spark radio transmitter and a receiver that uses a coherer and a tapper.  They even set up a demonstration and sent signals from the pier to the shore.  Very cool.  

I shared this with George WB5OYP of the Vienna Wireless Society because he had been looking carefully at the gear that Marconi allegedly used to make that first transatlantic contact.  George wondered if Marconi could have really done this with a coherer as his detector; he was -- for good reason -- skeptical.  Could a glass tube filled with metal filings really detect radio waves sent from across the mighty Atlantic?  

Marconi claimed that he did it with a coherer as the detector: 

On December 12, 1901, Marconi attempted to send the first radio signals across the Atlantic Ocean, in spite of predictions that the radio waves would be lost as the earth curved over that long distance. He set up a specially designed wireless receiver in Newfoundland, Canada, using a coherer (a glass tube filled with iron filings) to conduct radio waves, and balloons to lift the antenna as high as possible. The signals were sent in Morse code from Poldhu, Cornwall, in England. Marconi later wrote about the experience:

"Shortly before midday I placed the single earphone to my ear and started listening. The receiver on the table before me was very crude -- a few coils and condensers and a coherer -- no valves, no amplifiers, not even a crystal. But I was at last on the point of putting the correctness of all my beliefs to test. The answer came at 12: 30 when I heard, faintly but distinctly, pip-pip-pip. I handed the phone to Kemp: "Can you hear anything?" I asked. "Yes," he said. "The letter S." He could hear it. I knew then that all my anticipations had been justified. The electric waves sent out into space from Poldhu had traversed the Atlantic -- the distance, enormous as it seemed then, of 1,700 miles -- unimpeded by the curvature of the earth. The result meant much more to me than the mere successful realization of an experiment. As Sir Oliver Lodge has stated, it was an epoch in history. I now felt for the first time absolutely certain that the day would come when mankind would be able to send messages without wires not only across the Atlantic but between the farthermost ends of the earth."

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dt01ma.html

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

I mentioned this in SolderSmoke Podcast #242.  This resulted in a very interesting message from Steve AB4I: 

The reason that I am writing is to comment on the coherer and Marconi's transatlantic test. One of my research interests in my doctoral studies was the development and evolution of early radio detectors.  Marconi did not use a coherer for the successful transatlantic tests, but secretly used a detector and telephone receiver that had been invented by the Indian polymath Jagadish Chandra Bose of Calcutta.  Bose's iron-mercury-iron detector was sensitive to a wide range of wavelengths and he used the detector in his 60-GHz millimeter wave and experiments. Bose presented his results to the Royal Society in London in 1899 and his paper was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society the same year.  Marconi came by the mysterious mercury coherer detector through a friend in the Italian Navy who constructed the device from Bose's paper in the Proceedings in an effort to improve the performance of the Marconi equipment aboard . The Bose detector was superior to anything that Marconi had and was key to the success of the transatlantic tests and for Marconi's subsequent successes. Marconi then filed a patent for the detector in his own name in 1902, even though it was not his invention.  

A lot of nasty business went on in the early days of wireless. The scandal around the "Italian Navy coherer" raged for years, but eventually the role of Bose was revealed. The popular view of Marconi as radio inventor extraordinaire is idealistic, because he did not actually invent anything, but he was very good at dragging laboratory hardware into the real world to serve practical ends.  In every case, crucial parts of Marconi's patents were stolen or copied from other sources and successfully defended through aggressive litigation, deep financial backing, and extensive public relations through advertising and newspaper interviews. Marconi absolutely deserves recognition for his successes in the development of practical wireless communications although he is not noted for his ethics. Marconi's reputation is a bit tarnished nowadays, but that of Jagadish Chandra Bose has blossomed and he is now acknowledged for his epochal work that was fully a half-century before his time.

As for the coherer, we still do not have a full understanding of how the thing actually works.  The cohesion effect of small particles clumping together in the presence of a static charge has been known from antiquity as evidenced by dust bunnies under beds through the ages. There were coherer-like lightning arrestors used on telegraph lines just after the American Civil War and in 1879 David Hughes found that a carbon microphone with loose contacts could detect arcing in nearby equipment and from considerable distances too.  He was told that the phenomenon was nothing new and he just missed the discovery of radio waves.  Thanks to some monumentally bad advice we now speak of Hertzian Waves instead of Hughian Waves.  Branly made a detailed study of resistance changes in metal particles and is generally acknowledged as the inventor of the coherer detector. Oliver Lodge coined the name 'coherer' and demonstrated the detection of Hertzian waves in 1894 a few months after Hertz's death.  Lodge wrote a tribute to Hertz, which was to inspire the young Marconi to begin his own experiments with Hertzian waves.


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

Hack-A-Day looked at all this back in 2016:  

Here are the key passages:  One improvement invented by Bose in 1899 was the iron-mercury-iron coherer, with a pool of mercury in a small metal cup. A film of insulating oil covered the mercury, and an iron disc penetrated the oil but did not make contact with the liquid mercury. RF energy would break down the insulating oil and conduct, with the advantage of not needing a decoherer to reset the system.

Bose’s improved coherer design would miraculously appear in Marconi’s transatlantic wireless receiver two years later. The circumstances are somewhat shady – Marconi’s story about how he came up with the design varied over time, and there were reports that Bose’s circuit designs were stolen from a London hotel room while he was presenting his work. In any case, Bose was not interested in commercializing his invention, which Marconi would go on to patent himself.

---------------------------------------
Here is a lot more background on Dr. Bose: 

http://www.cse.iitm.ac.in/~murthy/sirjcbose.pdf

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

I think the more we learn about Marconi, the less admirable he seems. 

Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Faust Gonsett and the SB-33 in 1963

 
Click on the images for better views

When this ad appeared in 73 Magazine in February 1963 I was 4 years old, living on Manhattan Island.  Pete N6QW was in the Navy, heading to Midway Island. 

Pete writes: 

-------------------
This ad has a tremendous impact on the foundations of our hobby. The SBE-33 was pure genius in its design and implementation.

  1. It is a hybrid rig using Germanium transistors –the transistor was only 15 years old
  2. The Mechanical band switching showed the strong use of mechanical assemblies
  3. The small size was simply amazing
  4. The Bi-lateral circuitry predates any Bitx circuits.
  5. The urban legend was that a team of illuminati were involved in its design (Don Stoner is one name that pops up)
  6. The Japanese were a quick study and the FTdx100 in 1967 is a result, only better.
  7. Many are still around in shacks. I have three

 

Gonset was well known for innovative designs – the Gooney Box is another example. Look at all of his compact mobile equipment.

 

The next point – the final owner of SBE was Raytheon thusly the next generation of SDR Radio Equipment for the US Air Force can trace its pedigree to the SBE-33.

 

This was the appliance box of 1963. I saw my 1st SBE-33 (August 1963) when likely you were in the 2nd Grade and I was headed off to Midway island.

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

 


I have an SBE-33 that N6QW sent me. Thanks again Pete!

Also, I'd like to note that W6VR had a very cool name.  Faust Gonsett.  I just sounds like the name of a real radio guy.  Google says this of the given name Faust: 

"Faust as a boy's name is of Latin origin, and the meaning of Faust is 'fortunate, enjoying good luck.'   Indeed. 

Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Tim Hunkin's "The Radio Set" Drawing, and The Secret Life of the Radio (Remastered)

 

Click on the image for a better view. Click here for the whole drawing: 

I really liked this, and there is a lot more like it on the site of Tim Hunkin, the fellow who made all the great Secret Life of Machines shows.  His site: https://www.secretlifeofmachines.com/index.shtml

They remastered the show about radios.  It is worth watching: 

Thanks Tim! 

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