[HBR] HBR Update ...Bill McKay's (W7QBR)

[Kees & Sandy]

Every once in a while I receive some really great HBR email from someone who came across the website. I just received this note from Tom Rousseau and thought I would share it with the group. Just goes to show more of the history of these units and how they were appreciated. I often wondered where a unit like Bill McKay's ended up. I'll post the pictures to the website later.
73 Kees K5BCQ

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Hi Kees,<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
I was recently surfing the internet when I came across my photo on your website.  So I thought I’d send you a note to let you know that I am still alive and well.  I am the HBR-16 featured on the opening page on your very fine HBR website.  I was very lovingly built by Bill McKay, W7QBR, in the early sixties.
 
The attached photos show my current status.  A little older looking and a bit more worn, but still not bad for being nearly fifty years old.  I am still all here, with all my coils, storage drawer, and even the three-ring notebook with Bill’s design/construction notes.  I attended Washington State University with Bill while he was studying EE in Pullman.  I even operated CW Sweepstakes one cold November with Bill and Wes, W7ZOI, from Bill’s college room.  I enjoyed the active on-the-air life, and the considerable attention that Bill always seemed to find time to give me.  He liked to use me on the air, but I think he more enjoyed tinkering with my insides, improving my performance.  He was not happy with my excessive birdies, and was trying to reduce them.  The most notable modification was when he changed my product detector from a 6BE6 to a 7360.  I think that he was trying to get lower distortion.
 
Eventually, I think that he tired of me.  He sold me to a college mate, Linley Gumm, K7HFD.  He needed the money to fund his next HBR.  I guess Bill did, indeed, make a couple of more HBRs, but I never had the chance to meet them and do a side-by-side operation with them.  Linley took good care of me, but he mostly kept me stored in a safe, dark place in his garage, together with my coils and design notes.  Linley was too busy with his career and family to give me much attention.  Linley was one of Tektronix’ very top design engineers, leading the design of many forward looking spectrum analyzers.
 
By the early nineties, Linley realized that he probably wasn’t going to use me, and he wanted the space in his garage.  So he gave me to a Tek work associate of his, Tom Rousseau, K7PJT.  I have been living at Tom’s ever since.  At first, Tom carefully brought me up with a Variac, then we toured some of the bands together.  It really felt good to have that warm glow back, and the sensuous feeling of changing coils as we cruised the different bands.  And wow, to have those microvolts entering my antenna terminals and flowing though my vacuum circuits was an incredible feeling that I had long ago forgotten!  Tom cleaned my switch contacts and potentiometers, almost with the same love that Bill used to afford me.  He took notes of things that he wanted to do to return me to original operating condition.  He noticed my 7360, and made a note to return it to Ted’s original design;  but later he decided to leave it alone when he found out that it was an authentic W7QBR mod.
 
I am hopeful that I will again have a functional life at Tom’s QTH, operating alongside one of his vintage homebrew transmitters.  However, after our few weeks together, he disconnected me and put me on a shelf with many other radios, some of which are also homebrew, but many are Hallicrafters, Nationals and Hammarlunds.  I like the companionship provided by my commercial friends, but feel just a little apart from them, nonetheless.  I have been here for more than 15 years, and am still looking forward to another opportunity to feel the warmth of my tubes.
 
Anyway, thank you for so nicely displaying my photos and history on your website.  And thank you for allowing me to see all my cousins and the great levels of achievement that they aspired to.  Let’s keep in touch.  I’ll let you know when I’m on the air again.
 
73,  W7QBR’s HBR-16
 
BTW:  I want to thank Wes W7ZOI, Linley K7HFD and Tom K7PJT for helping me to remember my history and taking good care of me for these many years.  It is indeed a frightening thought to consider what might have happened with less understanding hams;  I could have been parted out for my beautiful dial or IF transformers!