[Hammarlund] Wrong bandspread dial ??

[Jon Teske]

About 40 years ago I had an old HQ 129x that I got from a work
colleague to whom I had given a Novice test. He had gotten it from
his late father who also had been a ham.  It had been used
in a PA coal mining town and was really filthy. I did manage to
clean it up and get it working. The dials were somewhat decrepit.
No, they were a LOT decrepit.

Sooooo, what I did.  I made paper templates of the dials using the
angular measurements from the center to each major dial point.
I also calibrated 15 meters on it since the HQ-129x antedated
15 meters as a ham band. I inked it using my old high school
drafting tools with india ink and I used small press-on lettering
for the numerals. (Did i mention this was painstaking?)  I then
took it to a photo lab who used this original, done on what was
then called "onion skin" a sort of transparent paper used for inking
drafting drawings (Imagine this is all done on CAD nowadays.)

I checked the calibrations with my HQ-100 and a 100KC calibrator.
The hash marks were done by eyeball.

The photo lab made contact negatives of my tracing which provided
a white-on-black tuning and band spread dial. I laminated the two
negatives between some rather tick transparent laminating film
which resulted in two dial faces about the thickness of the original
plastic ones.  I took the original and by now yellowing and torn
dial faces off their hubs and riveted the new faces to the hubs
and then reinstalled them in the HQ-129X.

(I later became a pro photographer as an avocational career and
I probably could have done the same sorts of things in my dark
room, but this was all done pre-darkroom. The labs most likely
used litho film for the transfer.

I played around with that radio for a couple of years and did just
about every published mod to it. It was a rather "hot" receiver
and I used it sometimes instead of the HQ-100 I had gotten as
a teenager from my parents.  I sold it to a fellow who was looking
for an SWL receiver.

So if you ever run into an HQ-129X (I forgot who bought it from me)
that has reversed dial colors...the light shown through the numbers...
and also has 15 meters calibrated (this was before the WARC bands
were introduced), it very likely is my old radio. There probably are
still some spots of coal dust in it. I think I may have also laminated
some white translucent film in the dial sandwich to soften the
light a bit.

Jon W3JT  (I may have put my then current call on it...W3DRV)




At 02:41 PM 12/24/2008, you wrote:
>DE WB4VFN Rich and I am working on a HQ-129-x that a friend bought 
>at a hamfest.  Someone did a fine job restoring the old rig but left 
>some issues.  I think he put in a wrong bandspread dial.  To align 
>the rig the books says to put the bandspread at 200.  This 
>bandspread has a scale of 0 to 100 with 0 being minimum 
>capacitance.  I got thru alignment with bandspread at 0 but when 
>using the bandspread the frequency goes down as I tune from 0 
>up.  The dial looks like it belongs but it's like its installed 
>backwards.  If this is the case any help on locating the right dial 
>appreciated.  73 Rich
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