[Boatanchors] Prewar Creativity

[Carl]

A good source of parts was the town dump, or roadside trash days, plus the 
automotive junk yard and scrap metal dealer.

For my first receiver and transmitter in the mid 50's the only cash outlay 
was about .50 each for a few WW2 surplus crystals and sheet aluminum from 
the scrap dealer to make chassis and panels.

Prewar crystals were expensive so it was either save up the cash for a new 
one or find another ham who had upgraded to an ECO.

With the wide range of tubes used in consumer products it was easy enough to 
build a 40-80W input TX for CW. It should be even easier now than the 50's 
as TVI as of last week is pretty much a non issue.

Carl
KM1H


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Tauson" <wh7hg.hi at gmail.com>
To: "boatanchors" <boatanchors at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 3:06 AM
Subject: [Boatanchors] Prewar Creativity


> 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
> Hiki Nô!
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