Ye Olde Radio Riggs

[W3WN]

Ah, OK. Yeah I'm sorry, I'm not a real broadcast engineer. I'll stand down and go back to the kitchen where I belong now.

Now you know you're going to get all sorts of snarky comments... just wait until someone throws in the "barefoot" and "pregnant" cliches as well.

...and I'm not a real broadcast engineer, although I did play one once for a couple of years. So I'll also stand down and head back to my server room. I'll have a chair waiting for you Kel if you make it down here instead...

[W3WN]

And getting back on topic... I miss my HT-37 & SX-111. Especially with the HT-41 hooked up to it.

Guess I'm just going to have to get that Swan 3Drifty, er, 350 rehabbed one of these days.

[kb2vxa]

"...just wait until someone throws in the "barefoot" and "pregnant" cliches as well."

OK, barefoot is the transmitter alone, pregnant is when it's a driver. Oh my, I see some old friends like the EV-664 mic on a desk stand, an NC-173 with matching speaker, an NC-303 and a Johnson Ranger. There are other boat anchors some friends had, you guys make me miss the good old days. Eh, unless you used a link coupled balanced output tuner like the illustrious Matchbox you didn't need one, the pi network matched 30-600 ohms and tubz are very SWR tolerant.

[AE1PT]

OK, barefoot is the transmitter alone, pregnant is when it's a driver. Eh, unless you used a link coupled balanced output tuner like the illustrious Matchbox you didn't need one, the pi network matched 30-600 ohms and tubz are very SWR tolerant.

I had not tried direct to coax yet with the 401. Do have a Matchbox, that comes on line with the Valiant in a couple months.

So, through the middle half of 80/75M, it does pretty good. This is a real possibility for barefoot CW contacts. However, I have gotten quite used to 10 over reports from Europe and the North Atlantic on 3.800Mhz. That needs the tuner. The shack stays pretty warm too...

[W8XLR]

Ah, OK. Yeah I'm sorry, I'm not a real broadcast engineer. I'll stand down and go back to the kitchen where I belong now.

Hey, bring us back a beer & chips before you start dinner...

[X-Rated]

And getting back on topic... I miss my HT-37 & SX-111. Especially with the HT-41 hooked up to it.

Guess I'm just going to have to get that Swan 3Drifty, er, 350 rehabbed one of these days.

I am not a big fan of old radios. I had old radio's when old radio's weren't cool, and that was all I had. But after I did sell the SX-111, I do realize what an excellent receiver that is. Very functional. Very excellent.

[HUGH]

A real broadcast engineer would know when to off-tune, or off-load, a transmitter in case the finals were cooking on a particular frequency. He could also adjust the drive and check the antenna was connected on the right feedpoint.

My favourite was checking the mercury arc rectifiers which no-one else remembered. Loss of one 3-phase rectifier would impart quite a hum on the modulation but the system would still keep working.

My least favourite was locking the ancient drive oscillators to a multivibrator (got the frequency wrong by 5kHz once...sorry listeners) until the arrival of more crystal oscillators and then the Rhode & Schwartz synthesisers.

[N8YX]

Speaking of older rigs...what would light my fire/warm my shack is an SR-2000/PS, remote VFO and TO-5 keyer. That is, if I had 220v in here.

[X-Rated]

A real broadcast engineer would know when to off-tune, or off-load, a transmitter in case the finals were cooking on a particular frequency. He could also adjust the drive and check the antenna was connected on the right feedpoint.

My favourite was checking the mercury arc rectifiers which no-one else remembered. Loss of one 3-phase rectifier would impart quite a hum on the modulation but the system would still keep working.

My least favourite was locking the ancient drive oscillators to a multivibrator (got the frequency wrong by 5kHz once...sorry listeners) until the arrival of more crystal oscillators and then the Rhode & Schwartz synthesisers.

If you use the proper toy cleaning tools, you won't have any problems with a moldy vibrator.

[kb2vxa]

Now where do I start? Eh, no particular order...

"I am not a big fan of old radios."
Some get rather hot like a converted AM broadcast transmitter so they had big fans built in. Moldy vibrators, what can I say? You forgot another thing a real broadcast engineer would know, peak RF output doesn't coincide with the dip in plate current. Yeah, blown rectifiers in a polyphase power supply sure do make a nasty hum, anyone who listened to Radio Moscow knows all about those humming transmitters in Ukraine while those in Russia were clean. Gotta hand it to Ukrainian engineers, parts were unavailable so they improvised. Speaking of mercury vapor rectifiers, flash over was a big problem particularly with remotely controlled transmitters, the HV switch/breaker can't be remotely controlled so the rather annoyed engineer had to go out to plant and reset it. Praise the radio god when xenon rectifiers came out and again when power silicon diodes appeared, home brewed stacks became common.

What's an SR-2000/PS?