Issue 14: Collecting the Classics

Hello,

Please post your comments on this article, or suggestions for future articles, here in our forum. If you haven't yet read the column, check it out at this link.

Dave

 

I love the looks, the warm sound, the fact that I can work on them as well as think of them as the personal jewels of the hams of past years. The real Hams. Everything you said in the article.
Interesting article and I look forward to reading the comments here in reply.
73, Chuck, AA0RI

 

Thank you Chuck. Wouldn't it be great if we could find a way to get young hams, newbies and more, involved with the classic radios in some way? Or, perhaps to have a great old timer or two put together a manual for repair and upkeep of the classics, so that anyone could dive into a project and come away with something special (as Dave Anderson has in the article). Dave

 

The problem with getting young people into repairing/restoring the boat anchors is that if they studied electronics today they wouldn't learn anything about the old circuits just as when I studied electronics I learned almost nothing about solid state electronics even though it was new. I studied mostly tube circuits and the FCC second and first class commercial licenses were all about tube equipment and theory. It did get me a decent job working for an avionics company though when most of their new techs understood the solid state stuff but they still made some tube equipment.

They would need Elmer help from start to finish.
Just rambling.
Chuck
Anderson and I discussed some of this at the last Tempe hamfest. We were talking amplifiers of course.

 

Old radios and old blue jeans never go out of style. Enjoyed the piece.
de WI4MM , aka Mark ..

 

Thanks Mark. You're right about old blue jeans as well! Dave

 

Thanks for the great article. For me it’s all about nostalgia. I was licensed at 15 and I'm now 62, getting ready, to start thinking, about maybe, retiring, perhaps!

I became an SWL around 4 years earlier than I was licensed, the early 1970's. My receivers were not much , initially an old broadcast set that had short wave and then a Codar CR70A, a set common in the UK at that time bit which was no more than a broadcast radio that would cover up to 30 MHz and had a bfo. It gave me my first taste of HF amateur radio, listening, or at least trying to listen, to SSB on 20 metres, and once in a while a bit of 15 metres. Once it was clear that the bug had truly bitten, I was gifted a very nice Trio (Kenwood) JR-310, a real ham receiver with at least a proper mechanical filter for SSB. So began my amateur radio life.

At that time there were a few amateur radio and magazines generally available in the UK, Practical Wireless, which was more a general electronics magazine but carried some articles and advertisements related to amateur radio, Short Wave Magazine, and of course the Journal of the Radio Society of Great Britain, RADCOM. Copies of the ARRL’s QST magazine, CQ magazine, or 73, were rare and poured over for every detail.

As a penniless teenager the amazing radios advertised in both the UK and American magazines were the stuff of dreams and even the rare chance to sit in front of a club members Heathkit SB101 at a field day type event was an incredible luxury never to be forgotten. The pictures of KW equipment, early Yaesu heavy weights like the FR400/FL400 then the almost ubiquitous FT101 appearing in the UK magazines alongside American Heathkit and Drake were assessed for all pertinent specifications and decisions made on just where to spend those imaginary hundreds of pounds. QST and CQ were a real revelation showing the amazing images of Collins, Hallicrafters, Swan and other fantastic products that rarely made it across the Atlantic and it was also such a thrill to listen in on a conversation where a US station was in contact with some other EU station or more exotic DX and would recount that the rig that end was Collins running a kilowatt.

The passage of time, a life playing with VHF and UHF radios all over the world lead to my settling in Thailand more than 25 years ago now. Finally, able to get on the air and equip a decent station I became aware of a Collins KWM-2A available for purchase locally, actually not one, but four! All were in less than good condition having clearly led a hard life, but the deal was done and the cleaning up to recover at least one began. It’s grown from there but definitely for me the ability to now own and use the equipment I could never dream of owning, even though I did, when a teenager is a strong force. As a part of that getting ready, to start thinking, about maybe, retiring, I’m now searching out a number of the radios that I could only dream about back then. It can’t turn the clock back, but I can at least realise what I never could then, at least on a personal level. The Collins S line is pretty much complete the Heathkit station is growing, I have a nice FT-101E, and I’m working on finding Drake equipment and some radios I owned in the past that made an impression, A great TS-830S which I consider a classic today is on the list along with a few others.

 

Great article! When I was first licensed, I purchased a Drake R4 and T4 along with the matching speaker. I used those to work the bands and get my Morse code up to specification so I could pass the 13 WPM test. I found one of my old QSL cards recently that had a picture of those pieces of equipment, I sure don't remember all the switches, knobs and dials! For all the complaining I hear about some of the radios today, I think they've got to be a lot easier to use than those "boat anchors". Sure, you have a lot of menus to poke through and adjust the radio for what you want to accomplish, but, for the most part, once you get the setting correct, you don't have to go back and mess with them. With the old "boat anchors", you had to make the same adjustments every time you turned them on! I still look at the swap meet ads when I see one of the Drakes listed, but I don't think I'll be purchasing another set any time soon.

73

 

The affinity for old radios, very much like old cars, is more psychological than anything else. The boat anchors do NOT perform as well as modern equipment in virtually any metric.
I know that when I remember my old HQ180C, or Drake SW4, or my Heathkit SB 102, I remember them within the context of being young - and the wonder and magic of radio. The lighting, the smell, and the sounds were all part of it. A very warm fuzzy feeling indeed.
And while for a few, the old rigs may just be where their skills stagnated, for most, these rigs represent a period in life that was unique and special.
Take that life context away, and the radios become just obsolete technology that belong in the past.
Same with old cars.

 

Thanks for the nice comment John, and for being a reader. If they had small memory circuits back then, it could have made things easier! What would have happened to radio gear if the Arduino was sent back in time by 50 years!

By the way, that's a great shot of a ball player on your Zed profile!

 

Hi James (Jim?) - Thanks for being a reader. Your comments remind me that, as with everything in ham radio, there's always another side of the coin that will be feverishly discussed. Dave

 

Hi Martin,
Thanks for the great comment - made my day. Your experience sounds like so much fun. I love Thailand and have been there a number of times. It would be so much fun to have a DX call and to get on the air as you have done, with a great station.

 

This was going through my head while I was reading this article.

I'm a big retro-computing enthusiast, and I really enjoy programming the computers from my childhood. . .but the reason it's enjoyable and remarkably "different" from modern computers is that you can understand the whole computer, from the smallest timing circuit up through how the registers work. There's just no way to have that level of understanding with a modern computer, and that's okay. Modern computers are much easier to program in most scenarios, generally last longer and generally fail less often.

It felt very much like there was a bit of rose-tinted goggles about the quality of these older radios.

The particular quote that got me:

It's John’s belief, and I agree, that the quality of radios will likely never be the same, as manufacturers have lost control over the total build because so many components come from China. It’s this global supply chain that has impacted so much of today’s technology in the ham radio world.​

It's true that most components are built in China, but even the worst components rolling out of the foundries and factories of Shenzhen are orders of magnitude more accurate, reliable, and safe than some of the highest-quality components ever pushed out of the factories of yester-decade.

The end result of modern production, both in computers and in radios, is many orders of magnitude more complex and many orders of magnitude more robust than anything that was produced previously. The idea is that, where before it was cheap and easy to swap out a specific component, now it's usually just as cheap and easy to swap out a collection of components inside an electronic device. A new GPU in a computer, for example, or a new (and I'm about to show how new I am to ham) oscillator of whatever in a radio.

I think, in the end, this article fell a little bit short on the factual side of things, leaning heavily on survivorship bias(1) and nostalgia.

Mind you, W7DGJ, there's nothing particularly wrong with that, as it is, by definition, an opinion piece, and I still enjoyed the read. I just felt like sharing my take as someone who has relevant-if-parallel experience in another discipline.
____

1: What I mean by this is that, if these radios were indeed so much better, why are they so hard to find these days? Why do collectors have to spend so much time and money to find and repair them? It's because the ones that are still around are the remarkable case, not the norm. I have an identical observation on classic cars.

 

It seems to me that the affinity hams have towards older "boat anchor" rigs is nearly identical to that in the classic car world, in that: people love what they grew up with.

Go to any car show on any given day, anywhere in America, and as you walk up and down the rows of cars...no matter what year or model car it is....there is a very high probability that the owner of that car bought it, restored it, and prizes it because that was THE car they loved when they were a teen. Doesn't matter if it's a '56 Bel Aire, a '65 Mustang, or a '72 Chevelle SS...that was the car they either had or wanted to have in high school.

Oh sure, some people inherit cars from their family, have them passed down a generation or two. More than likely the current owner has fond memories of riding around in that car when they were kids, or helping dad turn a wrench under the hood. That's what got them interested in older cars. But for most, it's a love of their favorite car from their youth. Or if you're rich enough, your favorites...plural.

But try to get today's teens hooked on older, classic cars? Good luck! They all want these modern rice-rockets so they can go re-create scenes from "Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift". Unless you yourself are a classic car lover and owner, and get your kids interested in it early on, they most likely aren't going to be interested in a 40-50-60 year old vehicle needing constant attention. I mean after all, getting your hands all greasy is so yesterday.

And I'm sure the same goes for ham radios. Those of you that grew up in the early years of the hobby, building kit radios and working those old boat anchor pieces, will have fond memories of those days, and thus...want to collect and restore these vintage pieces to relive the nostalgia. For me, having only been at this for three years, these boat anchor rigs have as much appeal as replacing my 60-inch Sony plasma screen TV with a b&w Philco from the 50's. Had I grown up with the hobby, or had my dad been a ham when I was a kid, then things might be different.

So...I'll stick to the modern rigs, and devote my restoration skills to keeping my pair of mid-70's MG's up and running. To each his own. But a great article nonetheless.

 

I'm still reeling from Chris's (KQ4DVY) guarded comment . . . (yes, Chris, it is an insult to tell a journalist that they didn't get the story right). But I'd like to point out that anyone who didn't start out by Short Wave Listening (Chris started with Computers) is likely not going to have the same appreciation for old radios as those who had their ham hobby stoked (no matter what year) because they listened to a radio first. For those of us who started this way, there's a love of the sound and smell and appearance of those classics. Someone who starts in the hobby because they want to do VHF-UHF emergency communications, or get into FT8 and digital ham radio, may not have the same appreciation of the sound/feel of classic radio. Now, I want to be clear, I agree with everyone here that there's a great deal of reminiscing involved . . . I stated as much in my article. But the two hams whose comments are present here are highly respected operators, and those whose opinions should be respected just as much as someone computer-savvy who just recently became a ham. All of us will have a different view of these radios. As Chris says, the radios that are collected today are the special ones of yesteryear . . . I agree wholeheartedly with that, as I'm sure there were some turkeys as well that just didn't go the distance. For me, I'd love to recreate my novice station, and I'll do that when I can afford it (boat anchors are NOT cheap). Do I expect that station to be just as clean and powerful as today's rigs? No, I'm not going that far. Do I expect that station to give me as much or more enjoyment as my ICOM IC-7300 and related gear? Absolutely a resounding YES.