[Boatanchors] HT-20 and Clipperton DXpedition

[Rob Atkinson]

Mike, don't feel wimpy.  When I got mine the owner and I carried it
out to the trunk of my car and we had to stop along the way for a
minute and rest.  When I got it home it stayed in the trunk of my car
for a couple days while I wondered how I'd get it out.  I have had two
hernias repaired in surgery and I did not want to risk another one.
Even with insurance it is expensive and a real nuisance.  After a few
days I felt ridiculous driving around with a rig in the trunk and got
a furniture dolly out of my garage and put it under the rear bumper of
my car.   I propped the 20 up sort of and slid it up on the lip of the
trunk and quickly lowered it down on the dolly.  whew, I felt it in my
abs but no harm done.  Then I wheeled it down the driveway into the
garage where it sat for a few days until a friend who is a lot
stronger came over and the two of us got it into my basement and up on
a table.

When we were done he said, "dang, what is this thing; how much does it
weigh?"  I told him about 100 or 120 lbs and he said, "I could tell."
When you think about it, most ham linear amplifiers made now don't
weigh that much.  I told this story to Howard W3HM and he said, "Now
you got a real boat anchor."

73

Rob
K5UJ

On Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Michael OBrien <k0myw at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> All this talk of the HT-20, plus the mention of its use on the Clipperton DXpedition, reminds me of a wonderful interview I had almost 20 years ago with Bob Denniston, W0DX in later years but W0NWX in the spring of 1954 when he and fellow Iowans Gene O'Leary, W0VDQ, and Leo Olney, W0NUC, set sail for the tiny island in the pacific 600 miles off the coast of Mexico.
>
> The purpose of our talk was to discuss the SX-88 for an article I did for Electric Radio and later QST. But we talked some about the HT-20 as well.
>
> Bob got a pair of HT-20s, two HT-18s to serve as VFOs and two SX-88s on loan from Hallicrafters for the DXpedition. He told me he just called up Fritz Franke at the Chicago factory and asked: "I figured the worst he could do to me was to say No -- but amazingly he said Yes."
>
> Denniston said that weight of the HT-20 (and the SX-88, too, for that matter) was a real challenge: "If we'd waited a couple of years, we could've taken lighter transceivers. But almost all of the rigs in the early '50s were heavy. And, besides, we weren't about to look a gift horse in the mouth."
>
> Bob is SK now. I don't know about O'Leary and Olney. I do know that I gave up my own HT-20 several years ago in part because it was too heavy for me to horse around. But I always felt a little wimpy for doing so because of how those guys hauled theirs on and off that island in rough seas.
>
> Mike, K0MYW