[ARC5] Cool acquisition (not for the squeamish)

[Robert Nickels]

  On 9/21/2010 2:03 PM, Kenneth G. Gordon wrote:
> It is actually fairly easy to build a phase-shift network now that will work at
> least as well as the B&W unit.
>
> Details in that ER article I mentioned a bit ago.
Yup, and if you listen to the Vintage Sideband Net on 14.293 Sunday 
afternoons at 1900Z you may just hear Mike KG7TR the author/builder on 
the air with them.   Check his qth page for pics, and his his defense, 
let me say that he used highly cannibalized ARC-5s for this project.

Early SSB intrigues me because back then hams were challenged by this 
really cool new technology and before much commercial gear came on the 
scene, had to figure out how to build their own gear.   Not a cakewalk 
even with todays components, although solid state certainly makes the 
task easier (i.e. two of the tubes in the W2EWL rig were 6AL5s that 
could be replaced by four diodes).

I've been breadboarding a tube-type DSB rig, but the next step will be 
to play with making a crystal filter using cheap crystals.    Phasing 
exciters work very well but the crystal filter method made the compact 
SSB transceiver possible.

And just for the record, the title "Cheap and Easy SSB" was how it was 
described in the original article that was published in QST back in 
March of 1956.

73, Bob W9RAN