[Boatanchors] SWEEP TUBES AND FPM 300S

[Bry Carling]

Yep - nice rig that duo bander and one of the best from the ham on a budget who only needed 40m and 80m !!

Nothing wrong with them, and I bet they could run that 300 watts pep input with no trouble.

> To: boatanchors at mailman.qth.net
> From: ranickel at comcast.net
> Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 11:48:41 -0600
> Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] SWEEP TUBES AND FPM 300S
> 
> On 1/11/2016 12:04 PM, Rob Atkinson wrote:
> > they were employed in cheap poorly constructed lightweight table top
> > SSB transceivers with crappy audio and drifting VFOs
> Hi Rob,
> 
> Well, some of us who grew up yearning for that kind of rig still enjoy 
> putting them on the air, and having fun with all kinds of radios.  
> Different strokes, is all.    For example, last weekend I finally got 
> around to replacing all the out-of-spec parts in my WRL Duo-Bander 84, 
> which arguably was one of the lightest-weight, cheapest-designed SSB 
> transceivers on the market, even though it's $159.95 selling price in 
> 1967 is the equivalent of over $1100 in todays money.
> 
> Leo Meyerson understood hams and the ham equipment market pretty well, 
> having over 20 years of experience by that time including the famous 
> Globe line of AM transmitters as well as the very popular Galaxy line of 
> SSB rigs.   Like everything,  his gear was designed to a price point and 
> he always tried to provide optimal performance for the buck, which is 
> why he used Heising modulation in the Globe Scout line instead of more 
> expensive plate modulation.     The Duo-Bander came out at a time when 
> 75 meter nets and  SSB mobile operation were popular, and it was 
> affordable enough that a ham could justify not hauling it in and out of 
> the car.  There are some clever aspects to the design too - such as the 
> 5.5 Mhz first IF and a VFO tuning 1.5-1.8Mhz that allowed coverage of 
> both popular 75 and 40 meter phone bands with simple and inexpensive 
> bandswitches. (laugh at the ganged slide-switches if you wish but having 
> fought to replace worn contacts on custom rotary switches, they have 
> their advantages).    The innovative two-transistor balanced modulator 
> made it very easy to null the carrier.    As someone recently pointed 
> out, WRL did the kind of value-engineering most hams would do in a 
> homebrew project, such as simple flat panels and using transistors where 
> it made sense (which is why the Duo-Bander's VFO is so stable).
> 
> Since they're a little scarce I put up a short video on the Duobander 84:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ6woUIDJeA
> 
> Why ridicule radios that don't happen to appeal to you?   There's lots 
> of options and it's all good.  Interesting industrial history lessons if 
> nothing else.
> 
> 73, Bob W9RAN
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