[Elecraft] OT-old vs. new 6L6 to K3

[Donehrlich at q.com]

This is one oldtimer who actually used such a design.  After more than 
58 years I finally understand how it worked .. actually, not very well 
for me.  Chirps and whoops were very common in those days and I can say 
with confidence that they were definitely acceptable and, in fact, were 
a characteristic of stations such as mine without the operator even 
knowing about the whoop.  Remember, like many other novices  I was using 
a simple regenerative receiver that could not be used for a monitor and 
never knew how my signal actually sounded in the other guys receiver.  
Even the more sophisticated superhets overloaded so easily that they did 
not provide a faithful reproduction of the outgoing rf.

Don K7FJ


> The 6L6 keyed oscillator shown in the Flickr page is certainly a
> lovingly-crafted piece of artwork, but I am a bit skeptical about the
> implication that a techno-adept ham of the late '30's would have been
> pleased by the chirp. After all, the 6L6 first appeared in 1936, and by
> then the 'x' and 'c' of the RST/x/c reporting scheme was probably
> already in use. Keying an oscillator working directly into an antenna
> was understood to be a poor idea. The MOPA idea was around long before
> the 6L6. There is a QST article in 1934 illustrating the general idea of
> a 2-stage transmitter, and the idea was known long before that.
>
> John Ragle -- W1ZI
>
>