I couldn't resist the pun, I've worn “fair” puns out on the family since my wife and I returned from the county fairgrounds with our family's winning fair entries.
My daughter entered five art entries, winning three firsts and two second-place ribbons. My son won a third-place ribbon for his last-minute art entry.
By the time we made it over to the antiques division, my 1955 Zenith Transoceanic receiver was nearly the only entry left. It sat there, the lid closed up tight, looking more like an old suitcase than a AM broadcast/shortwave receiver. But on closer inspection, I saw something wrapped around the handle. It was some sort of tag draped over the back of the radio. I thought perhaps it was a white third-place ribbon or honorable mention — I was very, very surprised to see it was a first-place blue ribbon hanging over the back of the radio.
The Zenith is an extremely clean example of the H-600 Zenith Transoceanic receiver. A high school friend of mine who is also a ham had one just like this one, and we both had a great time listening to shortwave stations on it.
I knew the Zenith was a nice radio, and I've been happy to have it here in my shack. Because its a very specialized radio, and probably not as collectible as other radios, I wasn't holding out hopes of its success in the class. When I brought my entry to the fair on Monday, there was a beautiful old cathedral radio sitting behind the counter that had already been entered. I did not get to inspect the radio closely, but from a short distance away it was a very fine looking radio. In my book, if you ask me to visualize “1930s broadcast receiver,” or “FDR fireside chat,” a cathedral radio would be what came to mind. Maybe I spent too much time watching reruns of “The Waltons” over the years.
I predicted the blue ribbon would go to the owner of the cathedral radio, and for good reason too. It was a beauty. But in its own right, so was the Zenith. I guess you had to know what you were looking at to appreciate the Zenith.
I bought the Zenith last year off eBay (of course) for less than $50. Considering the great shape its in, it was a bargain. I fully expected it to need lots of work to get playing, but it worked great and needed little work.
DIPOLE UP! As outlined in my three-act play (a portion of which is reproduced below), repairing a broken antenna these days can tax one's sanity — not to mention instill immeasurable angst and stress upon other family members. Despite the obstacles (and attitudes) the repaired dipole is back in place.
It's a little lower than it was, but that's by choice. While the leaves are on the tree, I can't see how to get one of the legs of the dipole over a branch (or branches). Rather than have that leg bending around a branch, I opted to wait to raise the center of the dipole to its full height this fall. I might even shoot another line over the tree, depending on how the support I have looks when I can see how secure it is.
The dipole tunes fine, as I knew it would. I had to shorten slightly the other leg of the dipole to get them even. Though I have never done this, I decided to install egg insulators at the ends of each leg of the dipole. Because I use nylon ropes, I've never worried about the lack of insulators at the end of each leg of my dipole. I've never had a problem because of it (that I've been aware of). I found these insulators in my storage cabinet and set them aside for this project. If nothing else, the insulators will help me identify the end of each leg of the dipole.
I never recall measuring the length of this antenna; it was something I cobbled together for our club's second or third Field Day about 1989, and I knew it was cut for “about 80 meters” but I couldn't remember more detail than that. On measuring it, it turned out that I made each leg 75 feet long. I shortened one side a few inches so they're equal again. There's no advantage of the longer-than-formula length, I think it was just what I had handy. Since the antenna is multiband, resonance isn't a necessity as long as the antenna is cut for at least the lowest frequency.
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EBAY AUCTION ACTION. I was browsing eBay early on a recent Sunday night/Monday morning and stumbled across an interesting listing for a WWII era Vibroplex Lightning Bug with carrying case.
The Buy It Now price was cheap, and the key looked to be in good shape. What the heck, right?? I threw caution (and my promise to cut back on buying Vibroplex keys) to the wind. A deal is a deal, right??
For once, I was lucky. Saturday my new Lightning Bug arrived — safely nestled in its carrying case. This key's condition was nothing short of incredible — it looked like had been in its case the last 60 years. Now this wasn't a particularly collectible key, but its a very very good one.
It also had some interesting custom touches. For example, on one of the damper's uprights, a tiny little cowboy spur is attached with a chain. It's like something that might have been an accessory for a western-style doll. Why it is attached to the damper of the Lightning Bug? On the right side of the damper is a small tag that simply has the number “50” on it.
I'm not sure what the significance of either item was to the original owner. I can confirm the key played well with only minor adjustments. The contacts were in fine shape and needed no cleaning.
STILL PLUGGING AWAY. I'm still using the Kenwood TS-430S as my main rig for now, though its on my desktop and leaving me little room to log or jot down notes.
It's been interesting to use it on the local 10-meter net. My Icom rigs are virtually dead-on frequency — when the display reads “00” after the decimal, you know its “00.” The Kenwood isn't quite as accurate — not that it is way off because it isn't. Its a few cycles off depending largely on where I leave the knob once I tune in the net frequency. The modification to let the trailing zero display has not been done to the rig, so there are 8 or 10 steps between 28.380.0 and 28.380.1 that do not show up on the display.
Good amateur practice dictates that you zero beat the guy you're working, and this is especially true during a net. The last few weeks I've used the rig on the 10-meter net as NCS, about half the stations checking were off frequency plus or minus several dozen Hertz.
The old-timers are typically the ones who are on my frequency, and that's likely because they remember the old days when you were fortunate to have a VFO with a resolution of 1 kHz per dial marking. You ignored the dial and tuned for the most natural sounding voice. As long as you were inside the ham bands and not outside your subband for your license privileges, you were good to go.
And of course, I get reports every week that while on the TS-430S, I'm “off frequency a little bit.” Perhaps a tutorial on zero beat/SSB tuning is in order? Naw, I think every new-to-HF ham should start out with a Heathkit SB-102. The rig has the best VFO of the SB series, and while accurate, using an analog VFO might break this psuedo-belief that every operating frequency must end in double zeros.
Speaking of the TS-430S, the guy who sold me the CW filter emailed and said he had a second SSB filter to sell for the same price if I wanted it. For whatever reason, I had moved his e-mail to my eBay archive folder and missed reading it all the way through, thinking it was an email about the CW filter. I've e-mailed him back to see if he still has the SSB filter, I may get it from him if the price stays the same.
I've been looking up the modifications for the TS-430S, and I've found that this radio has had none of the mods. It has never had any of the accessory filters either. It's original owners name is on a sticker on the case — a fellow in Hawaii who became a Silent Key in 2004. I originally believed this radio had been used on CB, but without evidence of any mods (plus the fact it doesn't transmit outside the ham bands), I don't believe it was ever touched.
I sold my Heathkit SB-1400 that I used this winter in my library listening post. I'll probably move the Kenwood there later on. The SB-1400 was a good rig, but the tuning knob had the same detented VFO encoder the FT-747GX had, and it was just plain annoying to tune. I considered trying to install one from the FT-757GX — that would be a big improvement. I heard a former 747GX owner on 3960 explain one morning the encorder was very different than the 757 due to the detents. And the encoder was one reason that worn 747s often are difficult to tune; sometimes they frequency changes when you don't touch the VFO. The rigs are also very sensitive to RF, particularly on 12 and 10 meters.
That's all for now, I've got to get some real work accomplished …. 73 es GA … de KY4Z … dit dit ….