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

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.

 

No one mentioned the Ameco TX-62, still have 2 of them.

I am also looking for a nice HA-460 6 meter AM rig.

 

TX-62 was a fine transmitter.

I don't have two, but did have "one" back in the day (with the VFO-621) and never had a problem with it. They did sound good, and I used mine a lot on CW back then, where it also worked fine. I thought the "spot" function could have been done better (it involved turning the mike gain all the way down to activate the "spot" switch...kind of weird), but it worked okay.

Started out with the CN-144 Nuvistor converter ahead of an NC-300 but stepped that up to a Janel solid-state RX converter which was slightly better.

Remember the days when "tuning around" for a call was a normal thing, because a lot of 2m AM ops were still xtal controlled?

My last 2m/6m AM rig was a Clegg Zeus, which ran about 4x the output power of the TX-62 and had its own VFO built-in. 125W output, plate modulated. It got attention.

Then, by about 1974 or so, everything was going to SSB and I sold all my AM gear. Probably shouldn't have done that, as AM could still be fun but I figured it was never coming back.

 

When I was a teenager in the mid- 60s, the only radios I got to play with were the Gonset rigs at the Civil Defense office in the basement of city hall. All AM in those days. I bought a military surplus AM radio from a guy in a neighboring town (Cranford?) for $35.00, which was a huge investment when I was 16 years old.
Tom WA4ILH

 

There's an old Route 66 episode that has Gooney Boxes and Julie Newmar. Mercy, what more could one ask for...Julie Newmar AND Gooney Boxes in the same show!

 

That made me smile ... that something special in the sound of a plate modulated rig.

 

I was on 2 meter AM in the late 60's when I lived in Maryland with a Ameco TX-62 and CN-144 converter ahead of a Lafayette receiver. 2 meters was great fun on the east coast in those days! No desire to work AM these days.

 

Lafayette HA-250 was a 6, 10(11), 15 meter linear amplifier.



Lafayette "premier" 2 meter transceiver was the HA-1200. I have one of these and it works quite well.



Lafayette's 6 meter HA-460 and the 10 meter version, HA-410, are still quite popular on those bands.



I have two Ameco VFO-621's One drives the Clegg 66'er and one drives the Clegg 22'er. As mentioned, the Clegg 22'er MK ii is a great two meter AM rig with 40 watts, built-in VFO, and a great receiver.



And. of course, my favorite rarest of the rare 6 meter combo's; my Whippany Labs Li'l Lulu receiver and transmitter

 

I had a 22'er MK II for a few years near the "peak" of AM activity on 2m, but it was all moving to SSB and by about 1974 or so, I sold it. That was a great 2m AM transceiver, I think likely the best ever made by anyone.

I tried like hell to convince Ed (Clegg) to include CW and just even a simple BFO, but he was kind of a perfectionist and figured without a good product detector and excellent keying characteristics, he didn't want to add the cost for that.

That was a time when CW was the "DX" mode for 2 meters! Anyone serious on 2m used CW for DXing and AM for chit-chatting.

DXing went to SSB and chit-chatting went to FM! By about 1975 or '76 I didn't have anything for 2m AM anymore. But I did have a Clegg FM-DX which was probably the best "amateur radio" 2m FM rig ever made.

 

Late 80's or early 90's, Ed sent me a whole carton of 8150 new finals for the Clegg 22 MK II. They're still around here somewhere. The 22'er MK II I have still has a good emission final in it. The front end of the receiver used several dual-gate MOSFETs.

 

Re old 6m gear, Ed (not Clegg, Ed Ladd W2IDZ) used to complain to me daily about overloading his receiver on 6m so badly he couldn't hear anything else.

But that was when he lived pretty close by; I was in W. Long Branch and he was somewhere in Monmouth County, I forget where but I think only about 10-15 miles away (c. 1984-85-86). I ran 1500W to stacked beams, and don't remember what he was using but evidently something that couldn't handle strong signals so well.

He even called me on the telephone to complain about it!

I remember the Lil' Lulu but never owned one, and didn't even know they were a "pair." I think I've only seen the receiver.

Ed was quite old already in the mid-80s and I believe died in the early or mid 90s. Good 6m enthusiast, for sure.

Re: "The old days on 6m SSB" (like early 70s) do you remember W2NOF from Brooklyn (I think) who used to drive up to Mt. Equinox, VT practically every weekend to operate from there? Geesh, he was up there a lot. He had a Clegg Venus in his car! From Equinox, he was always strong...location, location, location...