NAH BOYZ, YOU HAVEN'T SEEN REAL "SMOKE" UNTIL YOU LIT OFF A VACUUM-TUBE PROJECT & REAL SMOKE BILLOWED UP FROM THE UNIT ON THE WORK-BENCH!!! While with a solid-state project there'd only be a little whiff of smoke! unless maybe it was a 70w/50 amp switching supply!
Hey - I was a brand new Electronic Tech when I went to a Coast Guard Bouy Tender in Alaska circa 1970. The 125 Watt TDE-1 transmitter was the main LF rig. See attached picture. The two bowl insulators on top were the output and were routed from the radio shack to the external antenna. I immediately got the manual and carefully read how to tune and operate the thing while we were in port. I wanted to be familiar with everything before we got underway. While I was gently peaking/dipping the meters with the thirteen controls, the 1st class radioman watched me from his chair. He knew the system inside and out and had his own way of doing things. When I proudly finished tuning for max power out he said "No - that's not how to do it". He took a cigarette from behind his ear and held it close to the output bowl while keying the thing. He twisted all the controls in random order while drawing an arc with his cigarette. When he had the longest arc, he declared "Thats how it's done" and puffed on his newly lit cig. He literally tuned for maximum smoke.
Sorry for hijacking your thread Steve, I have a stupid noobie question and don't feel it needs it's own thread. Can these cw transceivers be used for mods like ft8? I'm assuming not, but don't know enough to know for sure. Thank you for the videos, they are always enjoyable! 73 de ZL
There are some mods for it to be able to do this, but I haven't done any more than heard that its possible. This is ham radio, all things are possible.
Got mine up and running, made a contact, but it is not happy in the box.... Need to work on that but everything fit. Tuning Torroids doubled my power to a bit over 4 watts as measured on the 20W dummy load sample point. 17.5V. 73 -Mike
Fixed! Made several contacts with good reports with everything buttoned up in the box! Currently running WSPR on 20m to burn it in. 10min off and 2 min on. Being spotted all over the planet. One spot cycle was spotted in Germany as well as VK land on an OCFD @35ft! Lotsa Fun! 73 -Mike
This will do stand alone WSPR..... Built in! I started by Reading the Manual! (RTFM) Took a bit to get the hang of it but now it is pretty simple. Beacon 6.1 ===== WSPR Frequency 6.2=====14.097.140 (you have 200hz to work with) Frame 6.3=========10 (minutes between cycles) Start 6.4========02 (must be an even number) (will xmit 02, 12, 22 minutes after you start) WSPR Call 6.5 =======N5AQM (with a space before my call, you will need to put 2 spaces) Grid Square 6.6======= Your 4 charcter grid sq WSPR Power 6.7=======See explanation in manual Set Time 6.8========== I set mine to WWV time hack UTC(but you only need to set minutes to the second) Back out and go to "save settings" and hit enter and it should take off and start running! I am now running the rig at 7.8V for WSPR to reduce the power down to under a watt to go easy on the finals. They were getting pretty toasty @4W after a 2 minute keydown. Check me out on WSPRnet.org Was spotted in Africa and China on the same cycle (before I reduced the power) Ant is a simple OCFD @35ft in an inverted V configuration. The WSPR mode was a selling point for me. I can also receive WWV on 10mhz with it! It even puts out power on 30m (~1w) and hears ok (Filtering not good though but I doubt anybody will notice) This has been a great resource: https://groups.io/g/QRPLabs/topics 73 -Mike
