[Boatanchors] newbie question

[Rob Atkinson]

Visiting a ham who has a shop can be educational, if such a ham is nearby.

Around here, hamfests have used tools such as hand tools and soldering
irons.  You may have a community of wood workers in your town;
sometimes there is a club and they have a newsletter or website and
they sell used shop tools.  Worth checking out as some of those tools
are good for old panel-chassis point to point wired tube gear and
eventually you'll want a drill press.

If you don't have one already a real good thing to have is a hand held
cordless battery powered drill.  Stihl and Milwaukee are okay brands.
You can find one at a big box store.  Don't get the lowest voltage
design.  Hamfests usually sell bits for these--nut drivers, flat and
philips drivers, drill bits, it's a multi-purpose tool.   A cordless
drill plus a couple of uni-bits (for making holes) can get you able to
make small holes in aluminum.  A vise is a good thing to have.

A good thing to start working on is a small tube audio amplifier.  At
hamfest flea markets, garage sales or on eBay, you can find a
monophonic little push pull tube amp, with a built-in preamp, around 6
to 15 watts.   It's a good starter project--no RF, no mixers,
oscillators, just power supplies and audio amplification and
transformers.  You will use it later to drive a big speaker with the
low output of a receiver detector so there's an eventual use for it so
it's not a pointless exercise.   The tubes in these are usually okay
so it becomes a re-capping job replacing old electrolytics, can caps
and plastic molded paper caps.   After the amp, you can get and re-cap
a VTVM.  If you don't know what anything is put the term in google and
find out.

When you get a piece of equipment come back here for more advice.
You'll want to know what kind of caps to put in, and all kinds of
other questions and you'll get 500 email answers and start an argument
about whether to shotgun the whole thing or not.  Looking forward to
it.

73

Rob
K5UJ