[HBR] overloading the HBR

[Bill Cromwell]

Hi Bill,

Yeah, Brian said he was going to build one for himself. I even sent him 
some of the parts. To be fair Brian paid me generously for them but it's 
disappointing to hear from him that he is having doubts - may not build 
one after all. He also was asking before that about building a regen to 
use on the air. In spite of assurances from regular users of regens he 
was put off by the weak points of regens and decided not to build one. I 
hope he is not getting cold feet this time. Brian?

I suspect that we can spend ten thousand dollars (or more) on a radio 
and would take a short time to discover it's weaknesses. I have a 
Kenwood R-599 with which I do much of my on-air business - including 
things like Field Day and the occasional sprint. It's an early effort at 
an all solid state receiver (1970-ish) and it's main weakness is it's 
ease of overloading. Sound familiar? When I have it connected to a full 
size antenna I have 20 dB of attenuation cranked in and I can hear the 
weak signals *BETTER* than with the attenuation out. Sometimes it's 40 
db! The attenuator is not required at all when I am using a short bit of 
wire in place of a real antenna and I still hear a lot of signals!

I would encourage anybody to build either a regen or something like the 
HBR and as a matter of fact an SDR. SDR's are the new version of hot rod 
radios and guess what. They have warts, too. I have most (maybe all) of 
the parts here to build one of the HBR models but in the meantime I have 
started being put off by all those vacuum tubes. Just the heater power 
for a radio like that is more then my entire station consumes when I use 
the Kenwood with a solid state TX. To me that is the most serious flaw. 
I know from experience what to do about overloads. Even with that 
insurmountable flaw I continue a slow march toward having my own HBR.

In the end, you have to pick one and go for it. When that's done, pick 
another and go for it. Otherwise none of it will ever get done. Just go 
ahead and build. Then start using whatever you have built. You'll get a 
much better idea of what you want to build next and you'll know why. 
Best of luck to all the builders here.

73,

Bill  KU8H


On 02/17/2015 11:54 AM, William Wood wrote:
> Hey Brian, I thought you were going to build one yourself???  : )
> Weren’t you saving the parts for one???  Anyways, I think the
> strong local can give you problems, according to the book that
> can be a problem.  But you can have several work arounds for this
> one of course cuts down on your sensitivity.  There are other ways
> to work around that problem too, T notch filter and such.
> 1.  Attenuate
> 2.  Less Regen
> 3.  filters
> I’m sure there are others, like ‘not' except-able quiet times : )
> Usually from what I hear, when there is a will, there is a way…
>
> I’m now on chapter three of THE Book : ), and this has been
> addressed.  There are a couple of other ways to deal with strong
> locals, but I won’t go into that right now : )  Nah, just kidding, but
> most of the time gentlemen’s  agreements can come into play.
> Most hams don’t live in their shack, so they have to shut down
> once in a while : )
>
> Back to that filter, it looks as tho it will help overcome your local
> interference,  I do know I don’t plan on taking mine out for field
> day activities.  I took an older rig out for field day once maybe a
> dozen or more years ago, for the fun of it, and found out rather
> quickly that it was useless : )
>
> 73 fer now
> Bill  KE9XQ
>   
> ______________________________________________________________
> HBR mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/hbr
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:HBR at mailman.qth.net
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>