[ARC5] Merry Christmas
Fuqua, Bill L
wlfuqu00 at uky.edu
Fri Dec 27 19:55:33 EST 2013
All my friends in the neighborhood got a REMCO kit radio the same Christmas.
I think one of us saw it in the comic books or some place and we discussed it and all asked our parents
for one.
One kid got the crystal radio, I got the one that had a crystal detector and one transistor amplifier and the
kid that got everything he wanted got the one that had a speaker and a microphone to talk thru the speaker,
the deluxe model.
I was playing with making crystal radios and heard the ham up the street talking. That was when I found out
about ham radio.
Did lots of stupid stuff as a kid too. I was a junior or senior in high school and a friend of mine came across some
really big transformers from an old tube computer at Vanderbilt University. I series the two and made a power supply that
produced about 1100 Volts at who knows how many amps. Had a zip cord providing AC to it and found a current limiting relay
that I put on the output of the supply. It was adjustable with a wire wound variable resistor in parallel with the coil.
It was a latching relay so when it engaged it latched and you had to reset it manually.
One weekend I was going to teach my cousin what he needed to get his novice license. We studied over the long weekend
and he actually learned how to copy 5WPM over a few days. He was excited about it and we worked day and night on it.
I was going to show him how to build an amplifier. I found a scrap chassis and mounted 4x 837s in grounded grid and
used a surplus pi wound rf choke. I got it all together and began tuning it up on 20Meters.
My hamshack was in a walk out basement and one of the doors was open. Our dog Tiny ( a large collie) was watching every
thing we were doing at the time.
Now, I had set the current limit relay so that it would not trip. Had no fuse in the primary. While tuning the amplifier up, driving
it with my Challenger, I noticed the output fluctuating. And all of a sudden there was a bang and a ZONK. A flame shout out
of the top of the chassis about a foot tall and the plasma continued until I grabbed the hot zip cord and pulled it out of the
socket.
The PI would RFC had gotten hot and sagged down to the chassis and started the arc. Once it had started it continued.
Bobby and Tiny both ran out of the basement, we did not see Tiny until the next day. In the mean time I wound a single
layer RFC on a tall insulator I had and the amp worked just fine.
That along with some of our other adventures always come up when I see my cousin. I have to tell you about our
homemade cannon malfunction sometime.
73
Bill wa4lav
________________________________________
From: arc5-bounces at mailman.qth.net [arc5-bounces at mailman.qth.net] on behalf of Mike Everette [radiocompass at yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, December 27, 2013 11:36 AM
To: jeepp at comcast.net; arc5 at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [ARC5] Merry Christmas
My hallmark Christmas was when I was ten years old and received a Remco crystal radio kit, the one with the single headphone and slide tuner. My dad and I built it that afternoon. It would only get one station, but worked okay, sounded fine. I listened to that little radio every night for a long, long time until I got my first pile of radio junque, which included a GE AM-FM acey-deucey 7-tube radio that worked, sort of, when I plugged it in but hummed like a squadron of B-17s. Dad told me the filter cap was shot; he showed me where it was and told me how to wire in a new one, bought with lawn mowing money. Somehow I managed to repair that deathtrap without 'lectra-shootin' myself.
My next hallmark Christmas was 2 years after the remco, when I received a subscription to the American Basic Science Club kit series... eight kits that took you, a month at a time, through basic electrcity, simple electronics, optics, astronomy, and experiments with nuclear material (a dot of radium as a 'source"). This was a miraculous gift and I learned far more from it than I ever would have in school science classes; but it would NEVER be allowed today because of politically correct, safety-obsessed, lawyer-driven idiocy in the education system (Omigawd, it has a HOT SOLDERiNG IRON in it! And HIGH VOLTAGE! and... and... RADIUM!!!! EEEEEEEEK!)... in fact I saw on a web site that the ABSC was branded one of the top ten "MOST DANGEROUS TOYS" of all time!!! Well, it didn't kill me. And I seriously doubt that it ever killed or injured anyone else!
Oh yes, I had an Erector Set too; got that a couple of Christmases before the Remco. I still have hardware from it in my junque box. Just like an ARC-5, you can't do a proper home brew project without it... Command Set parts and Erector Set bolts-n-nuts guarantee success. And once in a while I even use my good old ABSC soldering iron just for good measure.
73
Mike
WA4DLF
On Friday, December 27, 2013 10:56 AM, D. Platt <jeepp at comcast.net> wrote:
My two hallmark Christmases were, first in 1957, when I got a Gilbert
(erector set folks) "Erectronic Set". This is arguably my entree into
radio and electronics. A neighbor and engineer at Johns Hopkins APL
took notice and became my Elmer. During his family's holiday visit, he
took the "BC band code transmitter" configuration and put the headphone
in the cathode of the 1T4 tube and made an AM transmitter out of it. The
second, in 1960, when I got an E F Johnson Challenger transmitter kit.
That kicked the ball down the field a long way for me. BTW, when my
Elmer inspected my kit-building expertise (sic), we disassembled it and
he had me build it all over again, under his supervision and with a
handful or more of replacement parts from him.
Jeep - K3HVG
On 12/26/2013 11:13 AM, Fuqua, Bill L wrote:
> My most memorable Christmas was when I was only about 9 years old and got a S-38E under the tree.
> I knew it was coming and could not wait. Got everyone up in the early morning so I could open the package
> and went running off to my room to set it up. It was my first shortwave receiver.
> I never had a train or BB gun ("you'll put your eye out kid"). My father was a mechanic and when I was
> very young he had his own shop and put up a tall tower so he could have 2-way communication to his wreckers.
> That and seeing him fix our first TV set got me interested in radio.
> 73
> Bill wa4lav
>
> ________________________________________
> From: arc5-bounces at mailman.qth.net [arc5-bounces at mailman.qth.net] on behalf of Jay Coward [jcoward5452 at aol.com]
> Sent: Thursday, December 26, 2013 9:32 AM
> To: k2gkk at hotmail.com; joeconnor53 at yahoo.com; mark.k3msb at gmail.com; arc5 at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [ARC5] Merry Christmas
>
> It was 1956 when I got my American Flyer set, a 4-6-2 loco with tender, a coal carrier, flat car. Gulf tanker and caboose. Two switches and a de-coupler. Still have it and I got a bottle of "smoke" fluid too. Still love that smell as much as old mil radio smell!
> Jay
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: D C _Mac_ Macdonald <k2gkk at hotmail.com>
> To: Joe Connor <joeconnor53 at yahoo.com>; K3MSB Mark Bell <mark.k3msb at gmail.com>; ARC-5 Mail List <arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Wed, Dec 25, 2013 5:54 pm
> Subject: Re: [ARC5] Merry Christmas
>
>
> It was Christmas '49 or '50 at Grandma and Grandpa house when I came downstairs
> and Dad had set up the new Lionel Santa Fe double A unit freight train set under
> the tree. Had the coal hopper car, searchlight car, gondola car, operating box
> car and caboose and the KW transformer. My best Christmas ever! Still have it!
>
>
> * * * * * * * * * * *
> * 73 - Mac, K2GKK/5 *
> * (Since 30 Nov 53) *
> * Oklahoma City, OK *
> * USAF, Ret (61-81) *
> * * * * * * * * * * *
>
>
>> Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2013 12:54:35 -0800
>> From: joeconnor53 at yahoo.com
>> To: mark.k3msb at gmail.com; arc5 at mailman.qth.net
>> Subject: Re: [ARC5] Merry Christmas
>>
>> Very nice, Mark. Was there anything ever better than waking up on Christmas
> morning and finding a Lionel Santa Fe diesel engine under the tree?
>> Joe Connor
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, December 25, 2013 2:50 PM, Mark K3MSB <mark.k3msb at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> I shot this early this morning before anyone got up.
>>> http://www.k3msb.com/temp/train1.mp4
>>>
>>> It just wouldn't be Christmas without the old Lionel around the tree!
>>>
>>> God Bless & Merry Christmas to all of you!
>>>
>>> 73 Mark K3MSB
>
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