Licenced for any ship, any sea, a well qualified, intelligent amateur radio operator designed, built and refined a ssb transmitter around 1950 utilizing an LM-16 frequency standard as the VFO. The LM-16 was the Navy variant of the BC-221 frequency "meter" that allowed transmitters and receivers of ships and planes of WWII to be SET to the correct operational frequency with minimal real time tuning. This relative of mine published in QST his sideband transmitter with one mistake in the schematic, ON PURPOSE. I was 10 or 11 at the time and asked why he put a mistake in the plans. He said, "That mistake will be recognised by hams who know what they are doing, they will correct it and build a good transmitter. The hams that are ignorant will never figure it out." This was before I learned to ask, "Why is that important to you?" I thought at the time that his action was pretty mean, petty and arrogant. But what did I know. I was just a kid. Asking questions. Now, I am an old man. Still asking questions! Maybe some of you old guys met someone like this but he was the only one I ever met like that in ham radio. Every one I have ever met, except him, would bust a gut to help another ham or some kid who was fascinated by ham activity. The guys at Huntsville Hamfest and Ozarkcon bend over backwards to help each other, friend or stranger. There are plenty of genius designers and builders these days. Elecraft, M0NKA(SDR radio), QRP kit builders(many) just to scratch the surface. Any mistakes in this stuff are honest ones! My distant cousin was a very accomplished professional merchant Captain and a genius in every sense of the word but with a huge character flaw. He has been Silent Key for a couple of decades and I think ham radio is better without him.
FYI: Judicious use of a carriage-return makes for more enjoyable reading. Meanwhile, to intentionally mislead (or otherwise make more complicated) in order to prove how clever one is is just wrong.
When I was 13, one of the shortwave listening magazines of the day published the schematic of an audio filter. They claimed this filter was originally designed by a NASA communications engineer and had all kinds of wonderful properties for eliminating interference. It was a moderately complex network of resistors, capacitors and inductors. I remember the circuit had a dual-position switch for selectively clarifying either male or female voices. As a kid, I didn't understand the design, but was fully capable of building the circuit. So, I took my saved newspaper route earnings down to the local electronics parts store and bought all the necessary components. I built the circuit and the exciting moment arrived when I would give my new audio filter a try. Unfortunately, it didn't work. No sound came out of my radio's speaker. I double checked all the components and connections, but the circuit was a dud. A few months later, the magazine issued an apology to its readers. Apparently, the author of this "miraculous" audio filter had just drawn a fictitious schematic, with random component values, and submitted it as a odd sort of joke. A number of the magazine's readers had built the circuit and had experienced the same disappointment as myself.
Do you happen to know which issue of QST that was in? I'd like to see if I can figure out the error. HI!
When I wrote my article on the 2-meter Q-pole, a whole lot of hams didn't catch that it was an April fools article....even though it was obviously in the April issue. A lot of guys spent a lot of money on copper tubing. Well, I didn't want anyone too disappointed, so I figured out how to make the thing actually WORK....and it wasn't a bad antenna. But I had to write a second article, explaining myself.
No, I don't know. Hast to be a search feature. William Bendixen KL7MM was the author. That's a goodidea!
I thought back in ancient times, QST actually checked the designs they published. I never had a problem with a construction article from QST. I wish my dad was still around, that SSB transmitter sounds like a circuit he would have at least studied, if not try to build.
