[Elecraft] The Cost Of Amateur Radios

[Don Wilhelm]

I just passed my 60th year as a licensed radio amateur.  Started at the 
age of 15 (so go figure - the math is easy).
I was 'playing with tubes' at that time and built my first transmitter 
from an ARRL handbook design.  I used it through my novice year and 
later as a General.  After that, I began to build receivers, something 
few amateurs attempted at that time, but I did not have the funds to buy 
a good receiver.  I scrounged surplus parts because they were easily 
available as WW II surplus and you could buy a BC-453 for $5 at a 
surplus store.

When I was in college, I had a BC-348 receiver and wanting to get 
something on the air from my dorm room, I built a 10 meter transmitter 
from WW II transmitter components and had a lot of fun on 10 meter AM 
with an antenna hung out the window of the dorm.

In today's hindsight, I would like to have some of those BC series 
receivers and transmitters I stripped for parts because they fetch a 
'pretty penny' on Ebay and other sources today.  But I got value out of 
them, so I have no regrets.  I even have several 85 kHz IF cans in the 
attic should someone want them - I hate to see them go unused, but 
modern components and crystal filters do a better job today.

I gave up tubes sometime in the 1980s when I began converting tube 
radios to MOSFETS, and have never turned back.

73,
Don W3FPR

On 4/10/2015 7:55 PM, kevinr at coho.net wrote:
> I am too - I did not start playing with tubes until 1958.
>     Kevin.  KD5ONS
>