[ARC5] [Boatanchors] Coils and the winding thereof

[Michael Tauson]

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 6:06 AM, Ian Wilson<ianmwilson73 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've had a Millen (Miller?) adjustable coil get hot enough to discolor badly
> when used in a driver stage. This was probably a result of the small physical
> size of the component; something larger on an air core would probably not
> have got particularly hot.

How much power were you running through the coil?

> Harmonic suppression in output tanks depends to some extent on the (unloaded)
> Q of the inductor. If you are following your po'boy TX with a new-fangled modern
> antenna tuner, this is unlikely to matter. But it might be significant
> if you are running a long wire with no additional filtering.

No filtering but a po' boy tuner which worked nicely in the 30s and
will now.  Hams then were as concerned about signal purity and
harmonic suppression as they are now and they didn't have the new
fangled toys we do now.  What they did have was operating talent which
all the new fangled toys replace with automatic everything so there's
no real thought in operating a set.  (Okay, I'm gonna get flamed for
that but bring it on!)  My mentor learned the hard way starting in the
late 20s and taught me the same way.  It's a lot different from how it
is now.

Sidenote: I'm not completely against auto-everything
does-everything-but-breath-for-you sets ... under certain
circumstances.  Military systems are a good example as are sets used
for emergency communications (EARC et al.)  For normal ham use, I
believe that everyone should know the art of tuning a rig (and, yes,
it's an art) but I also believe everyone should have a good working
knowledge of CW.  Sadly, I'm in a shrinking minority.

> Fun project .. now where's my soldering iron?

NExt to your solder?  :-)

BEst regards,

Michael, WH7HG
-- 
http://www.nationalmssociety.org/chapters/NTH/index.aspx
http://wh7hg.blogspot.com/
http://kludges-other-blog.blogspot.com
Hiki Nô!