[Lowfer] Will an LF UpConverter Really be worth the effort, and expense

[Bill Cromwell]

Hi,

I have found ovens in ones and twos at hamfests, at Fair Radio, and on 
eBay. Many of them are built on an octal socket and resemble a metal 
octal tube. There are screws near the base that allow you to remove the 
sleeve and change the xtal. They include thermostat control so the 
crystal temperature is *controlled*. The heaters are available for 
various voltages so pay attention to that. I have some that are 12 Volts 
DC and one for 24 Volts. Another uses raw AC at ~125 volts directly off 
the power line. You could use a thermistor to roll your own.

I have some crystal channel elements that are temperature compensated 
from old VHF/UHF public safety radios and I am going to give those a 
try. I have some 10 MHz xtals and I intend to use one with my Kenwood 
R-599 on it's 30 meter band - 600 kc tuning range starting at 10 MHz and 
incorrectly labelled "WWV" <evil grin>. I should be able to receive from 
VLF through 600 KC and with a calibrated dial.

For the naysaying public I can buy an xtal to setup the VFO for 470 kc 
operation and then there will only be xtal controlled oscillators in the 
entire system. The 599 has six (five?) internal xtal slots that can be 
used instead of the VFO. The VFO is plenty good enough for ordinary SSB 
and CW (I do know that SSB is out of the question on any new 630 meter 
allocation). I will also get to use it for my NDB hunting. Using an xtal 
in that VFO slot for 470 kc operation will allow me to use quisk to tune 
the entire 630 meter band (7 kc wide) without changing *anything* in my 
R-599. The widest IF filter is about 20 kc wide with filters at 400 Hz, 
2.4 kHz, and 6 kHz.


On 12/07/2014 10:16 AM, Douglas D. Williams wrote:
> I think Todd bought a large batch of them off eBay. You can see how large
> it is in this pic:
>
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/33457409/toddconverter.jpg
>
> I think some members of this list have had some success with DIY crystal
> ovens. I can't remember exactly how they did it, but it involved creating a
> sleeve with a heater for the little crystal.
>
> D.
>
> On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 9:49 AM, Ben Hall <kd5byb at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>