[ARC5] Walter Ashe Novice Station

[Dave Sublette]

Good morning,

I was alerted to the discussion of this equipment by a friend.  I wish this
had occurred several years ago.  It would have saved me from looking for
the info for years now.

I had this station. I got it for Christmas, 1956, three months before I sat
for my novice test.  The license finally came in June, 1957. By that time,
the radio was built , antenna was up and I was ready to go.

You may see a photo of the station as it was in my basement in 1957 and
read the story on my QRZ.com page.  I have also written an article which
has been accepted for publication in QST in the "Celebrating Our Legacy"
column.  They have told me it will be published sometime in the next year.
I told them not to wait too long, as I will be 78 years old on the 22nd of
December.

As I said before, I searched for years for one of these for sale or just
trying to find someone who had one or who had heard of one.  I finally
found one reference to a thread on a discussion group several years ago.  I
contacted the person and he sent me the PDF file with all of the R&T News
articles.

I collected parts slowly and in January of this year, I started building
the three units.  I completed them in June and use them on the air
regularly on Monday nights with the Novice Rig Roundup Group on Facebook.
They are a great bunch of folks and I am enjoying using the little rig
again.

Frankly, with 62 years of amateur radio experience and a BSEE degree, I had
more trouble getting the rig to run than I did when I was 15 and knew
nothing. Then, I just turned it on and it worked. This time, I fiddled for
a couple of months before I thought it was ready to put on the air.  Go
figure. The rig is not an exact replica, but it looks very close.  I made
the coil forms and added vernier dials to the receiver. Those are the most
obvious differences.  Electrically, I wired the socket for the 5Y3, but put
solid state diodes in.  That resulted in higher voltage, so I changed the
power supply filter to a choke input configuration.

Until Dave, N9ZC gets his going, I think I have the only operating rig of
this type in the world. Dave is the only other person I know that has one.

I don't think I can post photos here, but I will gladly send you one by
private email if you wish.

73,

Dave, K4TO
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