[Boatanchors] Prewar Creativity

[Michael Tauson]

The period between 1929 and 1941 was marked by tight money due to the
depression but increasing ham activity.  As I see it, there had to be
a trade off somewhere in there between buy vs build, in this case not
so much the actual rigs but the parts that made them up.  I did enough
receiver breadboarding during my sinful youth and I know that wood was
a favored chassis material for homebrew transmitters.  That's not a
problem.  I also figure a lot of horse trading went on to gather the
major components (tubes, fixed HV capacitors, et al) that couldn't be
home made but what I don't know is what all was home made in the case
of the more frugal or desperate hams.  I'm thinking things like keys,
tube sockets & plate caps, and even crystal holders.

The reason for this line of questioning is that I am looking at
building a mid-1930s homebrew transmitter to go with the SX-24 - which
I'm going to assume was purchased with money saved over time to
replace a ... homebrew TRF?  When I was making my own receivers during
the 50s (from some 1930s Gernsback publications), I sometimes rolled
my own paper caps and made sliding plate variable caps, made resistors
and used various household items wherever they'd work for something I
didn't have on hand or didn't have funds for at the moment but I never
tried any of them building a transmitter.  (All of my homebrew
transmitters were built up using more civilized components - like bits
from command sets.)

Any thoughts would be gratefully accepted.

Best regards,

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