[Lowfer] Re: Oh, CRAP! or - " "HI, " the beacon heard 'roundthe world"

[Zack Widup]

Gee, it's been a while. I remember that I made a couple transmitters using 
some transistors I had - I want to say 2N706's. Probably not more than 100 
mW of power.

Antennas were 30 ft long horizontal runs of wire about 20 feet off the 
ground fed with a 20 foot vertical wire, in keeping with the FCC rules. 
It was a pretty crude system but we did manage to work with CW over a few 
miles distance.

I'd probably go about it completely differently now! That was almost 40 
years ago.

73, Zack W9SZ


On Thu, 4 Sep 2008, Robert M. Bratcher Jr. wrote:

> At 01:02 AM 9/4/2008, you wrote:
>
>> Back in the late 60's I stumbled across a couple 186 kHz crystals at a 
>> hamfest.  I threw together a couple low-power transmitters with them and 
>> gave one to a ham across town so we could have QSO's on that band. I built 
>> a couple up-converters so we could listen with our 80-m receivers on 3686 
>> kHz.
>> 
>> So people were doing things on LOWFer frequencies long before internet!
>> 
>> 73, Zack W9SZ
>
> Do you remember the power level of that transmitter & what kind of antenna 
> you used? What tubes did you use?
>
>
>> On Wed, 3 Sep 2008, Ed Phillips wrote:
>> 
>>> At 02:08 PM 9/3/2008, you wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Charlie,
>>>>
>>>>>   Does HI have a web site ?
>>>> 
>>>> Ronnie doesn't even own a typewriter, let alone a computer! Any QSL's you 
>>>> get from him will be handwritten in pencil on scrap paper. Sal, K1RGO, 
>>>> visited him recently, and posted this on the LWCA Message Board:
>>>> "For an update on medfer HI : I had an eyeball with Ronnie when I dropped 
>>>> by his QTH after a bit of hiking at Webb Mountain. I got the tour, it was 
>>>> like a time warp. He is running all tubes on both the Hifer and Medfer 
>>>> rigs. The latest Medfer rig runs 2 Xtals with a 6BE6 mixer(if any of you 
>>>> can recall that good old tube)with a output frequency of 513.5 KHz. The 
>>>> IDer is a motor driven aluminum wheel with pegs. Ronnie has no land line, 
>>>> cell or computer, only snail mail. His mailbox is decorated with high 
>>>> voltage insulators so it's easy to find his "shack". ........Sal"
>>>> JA
>>> 
>>> 
>>> So if he's not on the internet then what got him into setting up his 
>>> stations? Maybe a few magazine articles I'm not aware of. Goes he get 
>>> reception reports?"
>>>
>>>   There have been a number of magazine articles on "1750 meter" beacons 
>>> going back at least as far as one in QST in the mid-1960's.
>>> 
>>> Ed
>
>
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