Monday, Oct. 29, 2018 — Not much has been happening here in the shack with the exception of increasingly good night time propagation on 75/80 meters. Studio B (my shack in the corner of our library) has been working well; I really like my Yaesu FTDX-3000. The MFJ-969 roller inductor antenna tuner works well, even with the forward power meter inoperative. Once you get the hang of dialing in an antenna tuner by the received audio, it doesn’t take a lot more to get the tuner completely dialed in by watching the SWR on the rig’s meter. Tune the tuner for minimum reflected power, and you’re done. I have the MFJ-822 SWR bridge I bought to use outboard with the tuner, but so far I haven’t needed to use it yet.
Who among my readers poured over ham radio magazines and catalogs while studying for their Novice license (and while waiting for it to arrive in the mail)?? I received by first Heathkit catalog long before I became a ham; one of my R/C aircraft friends used to build the Heathkit R/C equipment, and he provded me with the catalogs. I discovered the ham and shortwave radios in those catalogs, along with all the other kits they sold.
I built my first Heathkit product the year after I was married — the HD-1416 code oscillator with the cheap, plastic base Japanese striaght key. The same year I spent salivating over every Heathkit catalog the came in the mail. I knew I wasn’t going to build the HW-5400 HF rig, but I was eyeballing two rigs in particular — the HW-9 QRP rig and the HW-99 (with matching speaker, of course!). I was also considering buying a GRC-9 low-power rcvr/txmtr from Fair Radio, but that’s another story.
I never have owned an HW-9, but I have owned two HW-8s, one of which I have hung onto over the years. The rig I really wanted as I worked on my Novice ticket was the HW-99; it was all solid state, built-in power supply, VFO-equipped and covered 250 kHz of the Novice bands we could use as Novice or Techs, which excluded 20 meters.
My Elmer did a very good job of advising me to steer clear of the GRC-9, and he also advised me there were enough used rigs on the market that I should avoid trying to build my first rig from a kit. He correctly suggested that getting on the air quickly was more important that trying to save money buying military surplus or a kit rig, especially as a new Novice. As such, my first rig was “Old Ironsides,” a Hallicrafters SR-150 transceiver.
In the back of my mind, I always wanted to own an HW-99 transceiver, and recently I had my chance. A seller had one listed on eBay with a rather expensive Buy It Now, and being the thrifty kind of cheapskate I am, I shot the seller a low-ball price. He countered, and it was reasonable; I jumped on it.
The HW-99 arrived this week with borderline packing; my instinct was that there would be some damage. Fortunately, the rig is built like a tank; no damage at all was visible. I was surprised by the rig’s heft; the building in power transformer for the supply adds to the weight substantially.
I tried the rig Friday evening here in Studio B and I was pleasantly surprised by how well the it worked.
One of the frequent complaints about the rig is its propensity for drift; Heathkit suggested giving the rig 30 minutes of warm-up time; the drift was substantial for 30 minutes, and continued at a very reduced rate while copying the mail on a couple of QSOs.
I didn’t have a key handy with an RCA jack so I did not try the transmit side. But I have been researching techniques to address the drift. Turns out an industrious ham has owned one and in his efforts to improve the rig’s stability, he noticed that the HW-99’s VFO was basically identical to the VFO circuit found on the SB-104 transceiver. He scrounged an SB-104 and removed the caps from the VFO and replaced the ones in the HW-99 VFO, and he found it made a huge improvement. He added a few other touches, but the SB-104 caps were one of the most beneficial changes. Anyway, I have purchased an SB-104 on eBay to use as a parts donor.
The HW-99 receiver is hot; it reminds me of the receiver on the HW-16 I have, which is also pretty hot. The only thing I wish the HW-99 had that the HW-16 has is a switch to “open up” the filter so you can copy SSB. It covers 250 kHz of 80, 40, 15 and 10, and it would be nice to listen to the phone stations on 80 and 40. The only thing I think the rig needs in regard to “bells & whistles” is an RIT circuit.
73 es CUL de KY4Z SK SK …. dit dit …