[HBR] Re: [HBR] Cost Of Homebrewing?

[Diane Swynar]

Tom et al,

Around the time I got my licence---1971---the Ham lobbyists at the C.R.R.L.
successfully got the Canadian government to drop any & all
tariffs/customs/duties on AMATEUR related equipment arriving from the U.S.

I guess when the import laws were in effect, it was fairly cost-prohibitive
to import gear from south of the border.

To-day, whenever I buy from the States, I always ask the shipper to mark
the package with, "CONTAINS AMATEUR/HAM RADIO EQUIPMENT, SHIPPED DUTY-
FREE"...if the dollar conversion of the content value is less than $20.00
Canadian, the parcel comes right to my door---any more than that & I have
to go to the village post office & pay General Sales Tax (8%).

The biggest cost prohibitor for cross-border shopping is the weak Canadian
dollar, relative to the U.S. greenback---that and exhorbitant brokerage
fees charged by the commercial shippers to get things across the border...

~73~ Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ





> Very intersting observations Jim. Apparently many of our friends to the
> north joined their Brittish cousins in building the DAF receiver. I
> wonder how accessible commercial equipment was for them from the US?
>
> 73,
> Tom  N5AMA
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <N2EY@aol.com>
> To: <hbr@mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 1:26 PM
> Subject: Re: [HBR] Cost Of Homebrewing?
>
>
>> A few more thoughts....
>>
>> Looking back through the ARRL Handbooks, it seems to me that about
>> 1960 or
> so the focus of the construction projects changed.
>>
>> Before that time, many of the projects were aimed at the "general
>> purpose
> amateur application". For example, a bandwitching transmitter would be
> described that would do AM and CW. Or a 500 watt GG amplifier for SSB.
>>
>> IOW, many of the projects were direct competition for commercially
> available products.
>>
>> But somewhere in the early '60s the focus started to move towards
>> 'niche'
> projects. Looking at the receivers in my '67 Handbook, I see:
>>
>> - a bandswitched solidstate regen set
>> - a tunable 80/40 converter from QST, several years earlier
>> - a regenerative preselector from QST
>> - a 20/15/10 xtal controlled converter
>> - the Junior Miser's Dream rx
>> - the HB-67
>>
>> None of these is a general-purpose receiver - nor do any of them have
> competing manufactured or kit products.
>>
>> The last truly general-purpose tube HBR I recall from ARRL Hq was the
> DCS-500. Its front end is obviously of HBR lineage, but it also had a
> number of really good features such as the roofing-filtered first IF at
> around 4.5 MHz (excellent image rejection and the upper bands have
> somewhat-lower freq. LOs), three bandwidths in the second IF (500 Hz
> CW, ~2 kHz SSB, 6 kHz AM), nice big open chassis layout with not much
> complex metalwork, not trick circuits, no expensive unobtanium parts.
> Quite practical for exact replication without lots of tools or test
> equipment.
>>
>> Of course the dial was only so-so, no bandswitching, and the choice of
> tubes completely unimaginative. But except for the bandswitching, that
> was all easily fixed by the imaginative ham, either during initial
> construction or as a modification.
>>
>> But after the DCS-500 (which originally appeared in QST about 1960 -
>> not
> much.
>>
>> Meanwhile, across the pond, the RSGB books were full of stuff that was
> "general purpose". Heck, the 3rd edition has a complete bandswitched
> hybrid SSB transceiver!
>>
>> Perhaps the explanation is simply economic - the cost of manufactured
>> or
> kit gear in the UK may have been so high that homebrewing a G2DAF rx
> from new parts was about the same cost as a much-inferior imported kit
> or manufactured rx.
>>
>> Which would you rather build for the same price - an SB-300 or a
>> G2DAF?
>>
>> Would be interesting to know what it would have cost to build a G2DAF
>> in
> the UK back in those times - and in the USA!
>>
>> 73 de Jim, N2EY
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ************************************
>> Visit the HBR Receiver Web Site with over 100 pictures of receivers
>> and construction notes...... via http://www.qsl.net/k5bcq/
>>
>> Retrieve reflector archived data via
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/hbr
>>
>>
>
>
> ************************************
> Visit the HBR Receiver Web Site with over 100 pictures of receivers and
>  construction notes...... via http://www.qsl.net/k5bcq/
>
> Retrieve reflector archived data via
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/hbr