[Boatanchors] We do live in a solid state world

Carl km1h at jeremy.mv.com
Sun Sep 19 11:37:55 EDT 2010


Ford has been over the top several times Rob, in print and on various 
forums.
With a Willie Billie 8 call sign he cant be expected to know very much about 
the "old days" except what he can read.

I certainly dont remember many amateur affordable commercial loads for open 
wire line or the ready availability of high power 300-600 Ohm terminators in 
the "old days" when I ran PP 250TH's. The common practice on AM was to tune 
up on a long winded gasbag such as W5PYT and it wasnt a quick process as 
today. First tune the various stages of the Viking I and then the input and 
output tanks of the amp.

These days DX list nets are a good place to tune while on CW there are 
always holes to be found except maybe in a contest.

These days I have a chart on each modern amp that lists dial settings for 
each band and mode as a start but it still requires a few seconds of carrier 
to be sure the grid current is safe and tweak the tuning. Adding another 
signal in the middle of a split frequency pileup isnt going to bother anyone 
(-;

For the boatanchor amps, and another Vking I or II, 32V2, etc,  it still 
takes a bit of time but similar charts are used to get close. What many fail 
to realize is that with Class C AM the tuning is critical for good 
modulation. Its also obvious that very few use a modulation monitor scope.

Try tuning an ART-13 into a dummy and then to an antenna and expect it to be 
proper.

I remember when sweep tube rigs arrived and most OT's tuned them like an old 
Class C rig, taking forever and cooking the finals on a regular basis. Its 
the same today with noobies getting into boatanchors and finding that new 
finals will cost them a good part of their  paycheck.....or welfare or 
disability check.

Carl
KM1H



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rob Atkinson" <ranchorobbo at gmail.com>
To: <leecraner at aol.com>
Cc: <boatanchors at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2010 11:04 PM
Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] We do live in a solid state world


I got one for you that is at least as outrageous:  In the August QST,
a guy named Steve Ford, WB8IMY published a one page article on the
need to own and use a dummy load for any ham operating an active
station transmitter.  Forgetting for the moment that it is pretty sad
when there has to be an article in QST telling hams they need a dummy
load, the second to last paragraph starts with this sentence:  "Back
in the days when hams had to manually tune their transmitters before
operating, dummy loads were common fixtures in most stations."

I had this Twilight Zone feeling--hams used to manually tune their
transmitters?.....No one does now?  What planet is Steve Ford on?   Or
am I in some parallel universe?  Dummy loads now uncommon?....I had
this crazy idea that not owning one was a dead giveaway for a lid.
Reeling with the room spinning around me I had to look in an AES
catalog to see if the rigs for sale had click stop channel switches
and if the mics for sale had echo preamps in them.

Rob
K5UJ

On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 3:48 PM,  <leecraner at aol.com> wrote:
> I stopped by All Electronics (the store in LA that advertises in QST)
> looking for a transformer.
>
> I asked the oldest guy there who appeared to be the store manager:
>
> "I need a 6.3 volt filament transformer."
>
> His response, "What's a filament transformer used for?"
>
> A true story. We do live in a solid state world.
>
> 73
> Lee WB6SSW
>
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