[ForSale-Swap] Homebrew Rig For Sale

[Don Merz]

HOMEBREW HAM RADIO FOR SALE by Don Merz, N3RHT. If you
are interested in purchasing this radio for $125 or if
you would like a detailed set of photos e-mailed to
you, please send an e-mail to n3rht at yahoo.com.

Background: This radio was built by W3QVC who is now a
silent key. I purchased it from another ham who hauled
it away at the request of the ham’s survivors but who
had no interest in it. My intent was to get the radio
back on the air. But it is apparent that I am never
going to get around to it. The asking price is what I
paid for the radio. I am located in Pittsburgh, PA.
The radio could be shipped but it is so large that the
shipping cost is likely to exceed the purchase price.
So please keep that in mind.

General: The radio is a sideband and CW rig designed
to cover 10 through 80 meters less the WARC bands. It
is a unique design that must have been built during
the 1950’s. The set shows careful engineering and
solid building practices. This is no hack job. It
consists of six 8.75 inch tall, black wrinkle 19” wide
panels mounted in a double-wide home-made wooden rack.
The power supply is separate and occupies another 10.5
inches of rack space. Also separate is a small VHF
transmitter that is 7 inches high. The one power
supply powers all components via a cable set that did
not come with the rig. So that is one of the
challenges here. The rig goes only about 12 inches
deep. So it is thin except for the power supply which
is about 18 inches deep. Since there are no power
supply components on the chassis, each component is
light. But the power supply itself weighs about 80
pounds. 

The unique part of the QVC design is that the whole
thing seems to have been designed to share circuitry
and work like a transceiver. So the same SSB filters
and gain circuits are shared by both the oscillator
and the receiver. The sections of the rig plug
together to facilitate this interaction. I have some
of these inter-connection cables but not all of them. 

As you look at the double-wide rack, the
Oscillator/Mixer/Filter deck is in the upper left, the
IF deck is middle left and the transmitter oscillator
tank is on the lower left. At top right is the linear
amplifier. Middle right is the receiver and the bottom
right is unknown—it looks like an NBFM modulator and
power supply but I can’t be sure. Each unit of the set
is described below.

Transmitter-oscillator tank: This is on the lower
left. This is just an R/C circuit in a sealed metal
box. It plugs into the oscillator/mixer/filter deck on
the top left. The OMF deck has 2 complex R/C filters
and uses 2 7360 tubes as “mixers” plus 6 other tubes.
It uses plug-in coils to change bands and the 40 meter
set is installed. I have no other plug-in coils for
the rig. The OMF deck is plugged directly into the
linear amplifier. This amp uses 4 1625 tubes in what
looks like a grounded grid configuration. The only
other tube in the linear is a 6AH6 which is apparently
used as an electronic T/R switch. In the middle left
section is the AF/IF deck with the S-meter and ALC
meter on it. This deck has the CW-LSB-USB mode switch
on it along with all the gain controls for AF, IF and
microphone. This deck has all the IF transformers on
it and uses 2 7360 tubes plus 11 other tubes.

The W3QVC receiver sits in the middle right panel.
It’s dial is calibrated for 160 through 2 meters,
though 6 meters has been left out. The receiver is
designed to ue 3 plug-in coils. Only one of these for
20 meters is in place. No other coils are present. The
receiver uses 10 tubes in an odd combination of octal,
loktal and miniature. It also uses 3 IF cans from an
ARC-5 command set. 

Finally, the panel in the lower right has 2
sub-chassis mounted to it. These are missing some of
their tubes and look like they have been modified a
few times over the years. One of these is a power
supply. The other is unknown, though it might be an
NBFM adapter of some sort.

That’s it. I have been over the rig pretty thoroughly
and have some semi-detailed notes to go with it.
Otherwise, there is no documentation so the restorer
is pretty much on their own. The entire rig is FOR
SALE AS-IS for $125. I can dismantle it for shipping
but it will end up in 5 or 6 cartons with a total
eight of about 175 pounds. So pick-up would be best
(in Pittsburgh, PA. This rig will be at the 2/23
WASHfest her in Pittsburgh looking for a buyer unless
someone here wants it.

Thanks.
73, Don Merz, N3RHT




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