[SMCARA] International Crystal

[sam at teamsupportatlantic.com]

And where does that leave us?  I guess with no source at all.

It has been nice knowing that if I picked up some old tube era box,
International could (and would) make the crystals for it.  The last ones I
bought were for a Motorola Commercial SSB transceiver, maybe 20 years ago
(and that may explain why they're going out of business).  I have thought
that it would be nice if someone had picked up the assets of Peterson Radio,
or Texas Crystals and still made FT-243's for the hobby market.

Time marches on.

73

KLC

-----Original Message-----
From: SMCARA [mailto:smcara-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Tom
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2017 9:50 PM
To: SMCARA <smcara at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: [SMCARA] International Crystal

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

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