[Milsurplus] Beating the ARB drum

[Ray Fantini]

In as much as there has been an ongoing thread about if it's proper or right to use plywood or only aluminum for construction of junction boxes and what series of coil is correct for use with prewar RU receivers for a couple weeks now I am going to beat the Ham radio drum as much as I can! That aside a question, for Novice or SWL use in the fifties, sixties and seventies I would think the ARB was a far better receiver then any of the ARC-5 receivers. One receiver covers both 80 and 40 meters unlike the ARC-5 stuff and thru in WWV too. One of my first receivers was an ARB that I installed the AC supply and new audio stage in back in 76, way outperformed the ARC-5 stuff I had and was about the same as a BC-348 only smaller. Don't recall the BC-348 having any better tuning rate but it did have a separate BFO and crystal filter that kind of worked. By 78 had my first R-390 along with some of the Collins Ham stuff like the 75A4 and the like so I left the WW2 stuff behind, but starting back in the early seventies and up to that point spent much time ripping apart, modifying and building equipment for Ham and SWL use and personally killed many ARC-5 receivers, transmitters and a couple ARB and BC-348 receivers too. Learning to solder, read schematics, build AC power supplies and working with equipment that the rest of the Ham community tossed off evolved to technical school, working in Broadcasting, college and a fairly successful carrier. Everyone else comes to this thru their own path, some have worked with this in the past and want to preserve the equipment how it was used, and others have different ideas. I have reached a point in my life that inspires me to duplicate equipment and techniques that were in use when I first got into radio as a teenager. The BC-348 video I have on YouTube is an example of the direction that I go in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKRez8euQU4

But this is a broad table that we are sitting at and I suppose that I may be at the far edge of the table, the furthest away from the side of the table that understands the importance of how junction boxes are constructed and what the appropriate coil is for the early series RU receiver.

Ray Fantini KA3EKH

-----Original Message-----
From: milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of jmfranke
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2011 12:42 PM
To: milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] ARB

Okay, there is nothing else to read here. Go about your business.

Have fun, enjoy your hobbies.

John  WA4WDL