[HBR] My New HBR-13 Running FB on 40m CW

[Whitebear1122]

I’ve been listening every night to 40m cw on my HBR-13L and it is such a joy to listen to signals from a radio that I built myself.  I’ve been wanting to build my own receiver since 1966.  I am actually shocked that I pulled this off considering it was the first radio project that I’ve ever built.  

Tonight I was experimenting with the 100 KC IF transformer coupling with those ARC5 military IF transformers.  Initially I was running them with maximum coupling, signals were really loud, and the bandwidth really wide.  Tonight I minimized coupling on all 4 IF’s and it did narrow up the bandwidth quite a bit.  I think there is plenty of gain in the regenerative IF’s to overcome the lighter coupling.  I wish I had a spectrum analyzer with tracking generator and I could see the change in bandwidth depending on coupling.  I have been eyeballing that Rigol DS815 spectrum analyzer…. it would have helped my initial troubleshooting quite a bit.   I am planning on building a CW/SSB transmitter next and a spectrum analyzer would be a big help.  

Tonight I was reading the HBR-13 Notes from the HBR website.  The first time I read them not much registered.  This time everything registered.  I really had to build it to understand 

I still have to learn how to adjust the BFO variable caps and coil better.  I thought I had it tuned tonight but it was clearly way off.  I better go back to the HBR-16 article and re-read that.

I’m still having trouble with the S-meter and will replace it this weekend and see if that makes a difference.

I don’t have the radio in a cabinet yet.  I have two commercial cabinets to pick from.  One is a Hallicrafters cabinet that would accept the rack mount., and the other is a cabinet from an old commercial oscillator.   I plan to bring them in from the garage rafter storage and see if it’s something I want to use.  Otherwise I might try building a cabinet like K4CHE did, a minimal cabinet built directly up to the chassis and doesn’t waste an inch of space.

Just curious if there are many HBR folks on this list anymore.  Anyone building an HBR?

73, Scott WA9WFA