[SMCARA] International Crystal

[Tom]

Sad, but true, International Crystal Manufacturing  in Oke City is going 
out of business!

While ICM is a commercial organization, they always took care of hams.  
Those of us with some gray hair on roof remember stockpiling those war 
surplus FT-243 crystals for our projects. We even discovered that 
International would grind you a "rock" for your favorite frequency for 
under $10!  Fun times!

FYI in the good old days, if you were a novice, you were limited to 75 
watts and crystal control.   Duplex I guess you would call it today, 
send CQ  on 7125 and then tune all over the band looking for a call! 
Yes, 75 watts! Sheesh, we have 2 meter "rice boxes" that do that!

We use International Crystal channel elements in the K3HKI repeater.  
The channel element contains the quartz crystal and temperature 
compensating components that keep the repeater exactly (well almost) on 
frequency. As I recall it was a couple hundred bux for the pair and they 
came "burned in" and custom temperature compensated.  Pete and I  
learned the hard way that just sticking a crystal into the repeater 
didn't work very well.  I think we put a couple of "Brand X" non 
compensated crystals in and it worked! For a couple of months! It didn't 
take long for the adjustment range to become insufficient for the aging 
of the crystal. Ya, get what ya pay for! We learned.

Ahh! The good old days of tubes and crystals.  Not a synthesizer in sight!

73 de Tom/W4OKW