[ARC5] History of Ham Mods: Opinions?

[dean at laptop4hire.com]

Jim -

On Sun, 28 Dec 2008 23:08:16 -0800, Jim Hill <hro5-2 at cox.net> wrote:
> Hi David:
> ...  For example, there was the conversion of the BC-453 to an
> 80 meter SSB transceiver, possibly written by Ed Mariner. A
> well-written book was published describing the changes.

The conversion was designed by Ernie Mason, W6IQY (SK) and the book was
written by his neighbor Ed Marriner, W6BLZ (SK) a prolific writer and
publisher.  The conversion could work on 80M or 40M.

> I built it,
> and was debugging it when I read in the Western Radio Amateur that it
> didn't transmit and receive on the same frequency.  I was having
> troubles with the transmitter, and put it aside - a bad idea since I
> never finished the project.  I still have the unfinished rig and book
> somewhere.

I hope you will find the book at tell us what version it is.  Ernie
designed at least three versions that I know of.  I have been loaned a copy
of the Version 2 book and have copied it and added some additional
information about Ernie.  You can see the preliminary results at
http://www.scr-274-n.info/bc453manual.pdf
I am still proof reading it since I retyped the text material and only
scanned the diagrams and pictures to keep the file size down.  Be advised
it is still a very large pdf, about 40 mb.

If you have a different version of the conversion book, I would like to
borrow it and do the same thing I did for the V2 manual.  It will also be
available on the Internet.

Also, if you have the article or the letter to Western Radio Amateur about
the transmit/receive frequency problem I would like to get a copy of it,
because that should never have been a problem.  It would only have happened
if one of the oscillators changed frequency during changeover from receive
to transmit, perhaps because of a voltage shift to the oscillator.

I am looking for any documents by Ernie Mason, W6IQY, or documents about
his projects.  He was a prolific SSB rig designer.  I have two later filter
based designs that he made, but unfortunately without any documentation. 
You can also see the rough design of a solid state SSB rig that he designed
in the web document.  I don't think he built a prototype from this design
before he passed away in 2000.

73 -- Dean Billing
      WA6IKJ