Yes Finally, 2 Meter AM Contacts are Back...................

Yes! I started out on 6 AM with a PolyComm 62, and a 5 element Cushcraft at 30', in 1969 or so. Upgraded my transmitter to a 6146 modulated by a pair of 1625's, from the 1963 handbook!!. Then I built an 829B 6 meter transverter from QST and drove it with a Gonset GSB-100!! My receiver was a 6 meter converter out of the VHF Manual with a 40 meter IF, to an ARC-5 surplus receiver. The good old days, when you could get all the parts from Allied or Lafayette!!!

 

Back in the late 60s I knew almost everyone who worked at PolyComm, since it was a northern NJ company and that's where I was. They were about 15 miles from where I grew up and lived at the time.

While Gonset was in CA, most of the other "VHF-AM rig" manufacturers really were in NJ and NY for some reason: Clegg, Ameco, Tecraft, Amplidyne, PolyComm, Lil' Lulu, everybody. Ditto for Parks, Janel and other "VHF-UHF receiving converter" manufacturers who weren't Ameco or Tecraft.

Bob Larkin, the guy who owned Janel Labs, was my neighbor in the 70s. When he moved from NJ to Oregon in the later 70s, he gave me a lot of his homebrewed gear, which was pretty cool stuff. Ed Clegg, who founded and ran Clegg Labs, was an "almost" neighbor. I worked for him after school and sometimes Saturdays in the late 60s, wiring up 22'ers and 66'ers and stuff.

"Those were the days!" for sure.

 

Did anyone here use or even hear of the LW-51, a 6M transmitter, sold by LW Electronics Lab of Jackson, MI? They were on the market in the late 50's and early 60's. The "LW" is Les Willis, W8PYY. I did find a link to a PDF with a brief discussion of the unit and an ad from QST. Price was $69.50 in kit form with tubes and crystal included. Provide your own tubes and crystal and save a few bucks.

Link 1

Link 2 (pdf)

 

Hmmm...guess I'd better break out the ol' Gooneybox

 

Brilliant designs.

Back when everybody put everything on one chassis, Gonset didn't. The Gooney Boxes are modular. Many are so old the built-in (vibrator type) DC power supplies were "6V." Those can be easily converted to 12V. And although designed when household power lines were 110V, they work fine on 120V or 125V also without blowing anything up.

I liked the original one and the Gonset II, with the 6E5 tuning eye.

"How strong is my signal?"

"You're closing the eye and it's overlapping!"

 

I not only have something like 25 TWOER (no, they are NOT for Sale, but you can probably get them for a Quarter a piece in my Estate Sale!!!) want the sale sooner?? Send a HIT MAN to polish me off!! Just make it quick and painless please!

Besides the Twoers, I have VIRTUALLY EVERY OTHER 2 Meter AM rig ever made, including the incredibly Rare SONAR CD-2. Of coulrse I have plenty of HW-17s, Pawnees, Knight TR102s. Hallicraftes SR-42s, Lafayettes, Gonsets, Polycomms, etc etc etc. That was a major focus of my collecting career. I refused to be OUTBID on these radios, and squanderere THOUSANDS of DOLLARS on them!! Each was lovingly restored to perfect conditon, then put on display in the Crest Radio Museum. Over time, though, the Museum has become a JUNK YARD and the Nun wants to burn down the house to get rid of them!! She has no idea how fast they'd all disappear if I just was at ROOM TEMPERATURE. She just doesn't want to KILL ME because I am too nice a Husband!

 

One INCREDIBLY RARE radio just showed up on Ebay. The ROBERT DOLLAR 2 meter reeiever. But the Seller wanted about $200 minimum bid for it. Few other ham collectors have ever heard of this.
no bids!! now he dropped the price to $129
https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-RO...232784?hash=item1aa4467d90:g:14oAAOSw6GNfa8QR

Still no bids! NO ONE has ever heard of this radio and few are into collecting anymore. So I am the only one in the world that wants it. But I don't want it THAT BAD!! I have enough JUNK!!

 

One radio was the Lafayette (OH I FORGET THE MODEL NUMBER. HA something) I bid it up to around $200 on Ebay way back when. This was a LARGE and HEAVY radio, the seller, in Michigan, sent it to me in a cardboard box with only WADDED UP NEWSPAPRER to protect it. Needless to say, it arrived ALL SMASHED UP. I still got it working. I tried to file a claim with the Post Office, but they said I would have to SURRENDER the radio to make the claim. NOT A CHANCE!! This was too rare!!!

So I just lived with the damage and figured a smashed up one was better than none at All!!

FAST FORWARD 10 years to the CHINO HILLS Swapmeet. I always arrived at about 4 AM so I would be there when the sellers first opened up. Incredible deals were to be found.
One month, there was Another LAFAYETTE HA-250??? The seller was all too happy to sell it to me for about $15!! of course I was quite JUBLIANT TOO!!! Now I have 2, one perfect condx and one Parts queen

 

The Lafayette sure wasn't worth $200 at any point in its lifetime.

Of all the 2m AM transceivers ever manufactured, the Clegg 22'er MK II, which ran 40W and had a TX VFO standard, and spectacular modulation, is probably the premier. I had one for years back ~1970-ish and it just blew away everything else for an "all in one" package. But today, even that wouldn't be worth anything like $200.

 

Unfortunately rare doesn't always equal valuable. I'd say that little 2 Meter is cute, but is it practical?

I have a pair of somewhat rare McMurdo Silver six and two meter twins. Or they may be single band VHF, been eons since I looked at them??? Regenerative receiver in one box, transmitter (sans power supply) in another. I believe the TX used 832 surplus tubes in the PA.