Saturday morning, Jan. 9, 2021
I have sold three SB-102s in recent weeks, and its time for me to return to the attic and dig for more equipment to sell.
Today’s expedition turned up an item that I remember buying but lost track of more than a decade ago …. a Knight V44 VFO. I remember buying the VFO but lost track of it among the piles of cardboard boxes in the attic, which brings to mind the government warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is stored, hi hi.
The VFO was well packed and I had to fish it out of bubblewrap and peanuts. The unit looks great. I plugged it in and it powered up, though I could not find the oscillating signal.
The unit’s VFO cable — the cable that plugs into your transmitter XTAL socket — was missing. On disassembly, I found that it appears the coax line was pulled lose or cut. I’ll need to make a new one, which I will. I’ve already ordered an old crystal case I will convert into a plug for the new cable.
The VFO is designed to work with the Knight T-60 transmitter that I uncovered recently. The transmitter works well, though I only have 3 crystals for it. After I found the T-60, I knew I had the VFO for it too … somewhere.
While my Yaesu FT-757GX has proven to be as good a CW rig as I remember, I decided today to take it out of service and put my Icom IC-756PROII in the operating position. The PROII was the bargain-priced rig I bought when its owner believed it wasn’t transmitting full power. I think he was accustomed to seeing the “swing” you see with CB rigs, and on SSB, the PROIII didn’t have that same kind of swing.
Despite the fact the PROII is getting a little long in tooth, it is still a competition class rig. It proved its capabilities tonight, in fact.
In the middle of my CW traffic net, a station fired up just a few hundred Hertz away from the net frequency. I was using the 500 Hz CW filter when the guy showed up, and he was squarely audible in my passband. I reduced the filter bandwidth down to 250 Hz, and the intruding signal was history. And there was no filter blow-by, no desensing, nothing. Just a clear frequency with copyable signals. I plan to keep the PROIII on the desk for a while.
In the meantime, I need to get a couple of feet of RG8X and make a cable for the VFO. Everything in time.
73 es CUL … de KY4Z …. SK …. SK ….. (dit dit) ….