I don't know what came over me, perhaps it was copying the mail on the Classic Exchange CW contest this weekend, but yesterday evening I fired up Old Ironsides.
That's the name given by the former owner of my beloved HALLICRAFTERS SR-150 transceiver. Right now, Ironsides has been running most of the evening. I'm listening to the religious fanatics on 3944 kHz again.
The rig was given the name by Oak Bailey, W4DHV (Danger High Voltage), who used to live in our area. He lives in Arizona now.
Ironsides was a rig that earned its name after it was lent to another local ham who abused the transmitter end of it until the finals finally melted down. But it continued to play, which is why it earned the nickname.
I wound up with Ironsides after I earned my Novice ticket. Oak had a small camper and he needed a storage box. Our deal was that if I built a box to his specifications, he would trade me Ironsides and the power supply for the box and $50 to boot.
I operated a body shop at the time, so I had plenty of welding equipment. I built the box out of angle iron and fairly heavy guage sheet metal. The box was heavy and bulletproof — I had overbuilt it, and actually spent a lot of money on materials for it. Ironsides probably cost me in the long run.
But I got the rig, and I can still remember how proud I was to bring it home.
I had been using a borrowed Kenwood TS-520SE, and it was a super rig. I had purchased a new MFJ-941D antenna tuner, and was having fun with an end-fed wire. I gave back the Kenwood and ran Ironsides fulltime until I bought my next rig, a Heathkit SB-102.
I had a slew of rigs for a while — the SB-102 was a great CW rig, and I should never had sold it. I had a Tempo 2020 and matching speaker — another great rig on both CW and phone. About this time I also jumped into the boat anchor stations. I had an SX-101A/HT32, and an SX-100/HT-37. I sold a local ham the SX-100 for $100 (it was mint); the other three pieces were sold for $150 — for all three! Waay too cheap!
I brought back Ironsides on the air, and had a problem with the VFO taking off on transmit. This turned out to be a varacter diode. I couldn't find a replacement part, but I cut it loose, which fixed the problem — and also it disabled the dial calibration adjustment.
I bought a couple other SR-150s. One is in the basement boxed up, and the other is in the attic. That rig works fine, the other one in the basement has had the TR switching messed up. It appears someone was trying to replace the relays with something else, and quit in the middle of the project. I probably should go to work on those to see how well they work.
It could sure help fund the purchase of new gear, too. An SR-150 transceiver on eBay this weekend sold for more than $305, and the seller admitted it didn't operate properly (“receives good on some bands”, and “very low output”). I can't imagine shelling out that much money for a rig that you can't run on the air yet!
Another big eBay sale was a Hallicrafters SX-101 that brought in a top bid of $680. Wow! I wish I had half a dozen of those to sell. I might look for one at Dayton or other hamfest. I still want another SX-101A, though the SX-111 may be cheaper to ship and more available.
I haven't run Ironsides on transmit forever, and I was going to use her to check in on the KSN CW net tonight, but I ran into a couple of problems.
First, the SR-150 has no sidetone; when I hooked up a bug, you get nothing to let you monitor your keying. I had my combo Bencher paddles with the MFJ keyer attached, but mine won't do grid block keying. Both of the older MFJ electronic keyers have grid block keying, but the only paddles I have were wired backwards. My Icom's can reverse the dit and dah paddles, but the Hallicrafters requires me to physically reverse the paddle wiring — a job I didn't want to tacklet tonight.
I tried my Heathkit HD-1410 electronic key, but it would not key the rig. If I recall, I modified it years ago for use with the new solid state rigs I bought.
I have a Hallicrafters keyer (HA-1) that works FB, but its packed in a box — somewhere. It's a good size keyer, and I hadn't really figured on displaying it, much less using it. I needed it tonight, and I'm not sure where I've got it stored (probably in the attic).
On keydown, I'm not getting as much power as I recall I used to get. It's indicated about 50 watts, and the note sounded pretty good on another receiver. I'll probably run it as-is if I ever get a sidetone arranged. I probably need to align it or check the tubes, it should have more output than that (or that's my recollection).
The semi break-in works well, though the VOX delay is set way too long. I'll need to change that, I'm not likely to run VOX on the rig anyway.
If I can find the HA-1 I'm set. Or I'll just reverse the wiring and use either of my ancient MFJ keyers — the path of least resistance!
73 de KY4Z … cul on vintage gear … sk …. dit dit …