...along with smarts, education, and a few decades of experience, of course!
I once bought an old classic car that had had its passenger door replaced. The guy who replaced the door didn't bother to transfer the old door lock to the new door - and, since the "new" door came from a junkyard, he didn't have the key to the new lock, either. He just drove around with that door permanently locked from the inside.
When I bought the car, I took it to a local locksmith - who happened to be located in a rather poor part of the city - to ask him if he could perhaps make me a key for this door with the unknown lock. He came out to the parking lot with a key blank, stuck it in the keyhole, wiggled it, pulled it out, looked at the faint scratches on it, and attacked the blank with a triangular file, filing out a little notch. Then he stuck the blank back into the lock, and repeated the process, over and over.
About ten minutes later, he handed me a new key that worked perfectly. We went back into his shop, and he told me the charge would be $25. I fished the money out of my wallet, gave it to him, and thanked him. He looked at me and said "You think it was worth it, huh? Some people don't want to pay $25 when they see it only took me ten minutes to make the key."
I said "I'm not paying you for the ten minutes it took to make the key. I'm paying you for the ten years it took you to get that good!"
We both laughed, I left, and I never saw him again.
-Gnobuddy
I have a very similar story, except I did see the guy again.
My first car was a 1949 Plymouth with a 6 cylinder flathead engine and a 6 volt positive ground electrical system. This was in 1970. I was 17 years old. Like most kids, I wanted it to go faster and have a loud stereo.
The car was slow, about an even match for a friends 1959 Volkswagen Beetle. I took it to the local drag strip where it turned a blazing 22 seconds in the quarter mile.
The stereo thing was a bit harder since nobody had stuff for a 6 volt electrical system. The original AM radio had tubes, but didn't work, so I fixed it, but there wasn't much good music on AM. I wired my Panasonic Cassette player into it to play tapes, but I still needed something better.
In a typical moment of dumb blonde engineering I simply replaced the 6 volt generator with an alternator from a 60's Dodge Dart using the regulator from the Dart, and installed a 12 volt battery. Of course this fried every light bulb in the car, which were replaced with 12 volt bulbs. The gas gauge read full all the time, but came off the "F" when it was time to go directly to the gas station. This worked, but the 6 volt starter would snap the Bendix spring about every year. After several years I had used up every starter in the local junkyards.
Someone told me about a guy in the poor section of town who could fix anything so I took the better starters in my dead starter collection to him. He laughed and said that he could rewind the coils for 12 volts. I don't remember how much it cost, but that starter never died and I had the car for over 20 years.
After blowing up the old flathead and fixing it a few times, I met an old drag racer who taught me how to use every machine in his shop and "blueprint" the old flathead with some upgrades of course. He did this in exchange for me teaching him enough electronics to wire up a rail dragster. My old Plymouth could now do the quarter mile in 17 seconds.....still slow, but acceptable for a "tank."
Fast forward to the mid 80's. I had a FWD Dodge Charger. The alternator died while we were on vacation and the Dodge dealer in Daytona wanted $300 to replace it, so I walked to a K-mart store and bought a battery charger. Every night I took the battery out of the car and charged it in the hotel bathtub.
When I got home I took the alternator out (which required removing the AC compressor and an idler pulley) and replaced it with one from the local parts store......the rebuilt one did not work. After taking the car apart again, I went back to the parts store rather angry. The guy handed me another alternator which made crunching noises when I spun it. I got my money and my core alternator back and never went to that store again.
I returned to the old guy in the ghetto who replaced the brushes and the bearing for a few $$$.
After grenading the transmission a few years later, I got another dumb blonde moment......Why couldn't I take one of those new Chrysler Turbo engines with transmission and stuff it into the little Omni based Charger? With a little help from a guy named Shelby (who was the expert in stuffing big engines into little cars) I had created an ugly FWD car that could successfully hunt Mustang GT's on the dragstrip and smoke them at the autocross. It had about 300 watts of audio too.
My first car was a 1949 Plymouth with a 6 cylinder flathead engine and a 6 volt positive ground electrical system. This was in 1970. I was 17 years old. Like most kids, I wanted it to go faster and have a loud stereo.
The car was slow, about an even match for a friends 1959 Volkswagen Beetle. I took it to the local drag strip where it turned a blazing 22 seconds in the quarter mile.
The stereo thing was a bit harder since nobody had stuff for a 6 volt electrical system. The original AM radio had tubes, but didn't work, so I fixed it, but there wasn't much good music on AM. I wired my Panasonic Cassette player into it to play tapes, but I still needed something better.
In a typical moment of dumb blonde engineering I simply replaced the 6 volt generator with an alternator from a 60's Dodge Dart using the regulator from the Dart, and installed a 12 volt battery. Of course this fried every light bulb in the car, which were replaced with 12 volt bulbs. The gas gauge read full all the time, but came off the "F" when it was time to go directly to the gas station. This worked, but the 6 volt starter would snap the Bendix spring about every year. After several years I had used up every starter in the local junkyards.
Someone told me about a guy in the poor section of town who could fix anything so I took the better starters in my dead starter collection to him. He laughed and said that he could rewind the coils for 12 volts. I don't remember how much it cost, but that starter never died and I had the car for over 20 years.
After blowing up the old flathead and fixing it a few times, I met an old drag racer who taught me how to use every machine in his shop and "blueprint" the old flathead with some upgrades of course. He did this in exchange for me teaching him enough electronics to wire up a rail dragster. My old Plymouth could now do the quarter mile in 17 seconds.....still slow, but acceptable for a "tank."
Fast forward to the mid 80's. I had a FWD Dodge Charger. The alternator died while we were on vacation and the Dodge dealer in Daytona wanted $300 to replace it, so I walked to a K-mart store and bought a battery charger. Every night I took the battery out of the car and charged it in the hotel bathtub.
When I got home I took the alternator out (which required removing the AC compressor and an idler pulley) and replaced it with one from the local parts store......the rebuilt one did not work. After taking the car apart again, I went back to the parts store rather angry. The guy handed me another alternator which made crunching noises when I spun it. I got my money and my core alternator back and never went to that store again.
I returned to the old guy in the ghetto who replaced the brushes and the bearing for a few $$$.
After grenading the transmission a few years later, I got another dumb blonde moment......Why couldn't I take one of those new Chrysler Turbo engines with transmission and stuff it into the little Omni based Charger? With a little help from a guy named Shelby (who was the expert in stuffing big engines into little cars) I had created an ugly FWD car that could successfully hunt Mustang GT's on the dragstrip and smoke them at the autocross. It had about 300 watts of audio too.
Mmm... Interesting stuff spinning 'round here...
I am not only the enthusiast for tube amps and guitar gear, many stuff that I have on my plan... Ah, my first transmitter... Delivered 25W to antenna, FM, stereo... Nice thing... Yes, I know poking around 20-100W transmitters is illegal but who cares these days, internet is everywhere, pirate radios like mine are not the "deal" anymore... So police in my country doesnt even know what transmitters are... (The beasts of history freedom speech) so I fill free to just fire it up and play billions of LP's through it... Serves as a nice thing when people need the "old music, free speech, nostalgia etc." Because local stations are full of modern, sometimes shiet news that are programmed for consumers, and not conspirators... But let's continue to electronics part... It is a small 3W transmitter which has a giant RF power amp... All powered by 18V toroid, and the sound from the record player is filtered thru tube preamp, and then sent to the transmitter... Transmitters are not kinda my thing, but i know a few tricks here or there... Transmitters are like the stuff that I do to kill time...
I am not only the enthusiast for tube amps and guitar gear, many stuff that I have on my plan... Ah, my first transmitter... Delivered 25W to antenna, FM, stereo... Nice thing... Yes, I know poking around 20-100W transmitters is illegal but who cares these days, internet is everywhere, pirate radios like mine are not the "deal" anymore... So police in my country doesnt even know what transmitters are... (The beasts of history freedom speech) so I fill free to just fire it up and play billions of LP's through it... Serves as a nice thing when people need the "old music, free speech, nostalgia etc." Because local stations are full of modern, sometimes shiet news that are programmed for consumers, and not conspirators... But let's continue to electronics part... It is a small 3W transmitter which has a giant RF power amp... All powered by 18V toroid, and the sound from the record player is filtered thru tube preamp, and then sent to the transmitter... Transmitters are not kinda my thing, but i know a few tricks here or there... Transmitters are like the stuff that I do to kill time...
The main difference between audiophiles (Or who build his own audio sets) and the RF lovers, is that the former enjoy the results of the task, while the latter can't enjoy them, in fact, it is the receiver side who take advantage of a good audio section of a transmitter, be it AM or FM, letting apart SSB. But in the last case, generally speaking "ham radio" actually listen in a plastic set where the advantages of a good AM modulator are completely lost and they only say "Your transmitter is 518.3Hz out of frequency", for example. (Obvious, one is with an LC oscillator while the other may be with a high cost synthesized rig). Also, "ham radio" itself is being lost.
I am deeply interested in both audio and RF, and realize that there are a few possible areas where they both intersect and are quasi legal in the US which are not covered on the usual RF and ham radio forums. Short range wireless mics, wireless musical instruments and wireless MIDI are a few that could be accommodated in the ISM frequency bands, and possibly built by home DIYers.
I also realize that there are a very few of us here that share the same interests, so a separate sub forum would probably see little use. Ditto DIY music synthesizers.
It is possible to transmit HiFi audio on the ham bands while remaining within the FCC emission bandwidths using SSB. There are a few enterprising hams who have figured this out. If you do have a receiver that doesn't live inside a Japanese or Chinese plastic box, tune into these guys some evening. Their audio is cleaner than the over processed crud that flows from an AM broadcasting station these days. For SSB to remain clean, your receiver must be PLL locked or otherwise free of frequency drift.
WZ5Q & VooDoo Audio Crew Hi-Fi eSSB Amateur Radio Stations
Yes most transceivers use 3 KHz or less bandwidth for SSB, but it appears to be legal to use the entire 6 KHz or more commonly used for AM with SSB modulation. This requires either designing your own transceiver or modifying a commercial rig. The web site I linked has links to the sites of many of the worldwide ham operators now using eSSB. Several of them go into detail of how they are achieving eSSB. Some are simple radio hacks, while others use a rack full of DSP based audio processing hardware.
Me, for now I have one of those Japanese plastic boxes, but I am planning my own radio design.
Me, for now I have one of those Japanese plastic boxes, but I am planning my own radio design.
I'd been thinking along these lines over the last week.
I hadn't abandoned this thread, just otherwise occupied, and have been viewing the wide range of responses here.
I'd counter argue the objection to such, in that many of us have a past history of interest in both audio and rf devices and there is a related / relevant association.
Just like many here, in my earlier years I'd played around with audio gear and at the same time as RF transmitters.... and with old cars, the DIY patch ups or transplants we managed to keep the old wreck going despite poverty.
Some of the old 'mad mates' went on to base their professional careers in the audio field, some in the RF field, some in the computer field eventually, some like me into the electrical trade that included power electronics [AC & DC VSD's]... and some into the automotive fields.
One thing needs to be said.... Looking back in hind sight many times over the years, I wondered how I managed to survive some of the crazy dangerous stuff we did, often totally ignorant [and sometimes not] of the deadly risks.
Sadly, some of us didn't survive.
Sooner or later those electro tech interests crossover again and again.
How can it be said RF transmission knowledge isn't relevant when it can have a profound effect on your audio gear.... in this regard attempts to suppress RF.
Small benign RF stuff of little annoyance potential - how is discussion and sharing our diverse experience in these fields a 'negative' warranting moderation or suppression by burial in random threads scattered around and suffering from a lack of specific zone for posting such topics?
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Given the banter in some of the other "lounge" threads, I don't think we are in any danger of being zapped by the moderators.......unless we start building our own broadcasting station or something like that.
Given the fact that this thread has been active and visible in the first page of the lounge for nearly a month yet only has about a dozen posters and 52 posts, we are not capable of filling up a sub forum of its own. Too bad I never took pictures of my DIY transmitter with the plates of it's 4-400 glowing bright orange! That would get some attention.
If this thread goes silent for a while, it shouldn't be too hard to find with a search....except for the fact that the letters RF mean something else to the car audio crowd.....RF = Rockford Fosgate.
Just search for RF gear.
Well, the original subject matter - an almost certainly illegal FM BCB XMTR - is not really conducive to responsible discussion.
You guys planning your own HF transceivers, the way you are thinking about going about that, could have some legs. I've been intending on building another SSB rig. I have some matched LSB/USB filter sets and carrier crystals for 9 and 10.35 MHz. If / when, I build another, it will be pretty simple and old school, and mostly solid state, except for the final and TX/RX audio.
Win W5JAG
You guys planning your own HF transceivers, the way you are thinking about going about that, could have some legs. I've been intending on building another SSB rig. I have some matched LSB/USB filter sets and carrier crystals for 9 and 10.35 MHz. If / when, I build another, it will be pretty simple and old school, and mostly solid state, except for the final and TX/RX audio.
Win W5JAG
Despite my user name my RF stuff has been predominately solid state except for a certain linear amplifier that ran a 4PR400 (4-400 that is Pulse Rated) in the bright red glow region.
I spent a good part of my life "advancing the state of the art" in two way radio. During those years, especially the experimental transmitter stuff, I blew up more silicon, GaN, GaAs, and SiC than all the vacuum tubes I have fried in my lifetime! There were three of us who worked on broad band and high power (120 watts peak LTE power) solid state power amps. We had a box where we all contributed our dead parts. After a few years I got to carry it to the salvage area for gold reclamation. My guess was about 40 pounds of dead transistors, some just 3 legs and a piece of charcoal.
My first effort will consist of a "breadboard" similar to what I made at Motorola with several Mini Circuits parts, some of those Chinese PC boards found on Ebay, and some boards that I have built, all connected up to make a transceiver. No specific specs yet, just to see what I can get, general coverage, say 100 KHz to however many GHz I can get cheap parts for. 1 GHz is a given, I have already made such things, probably ham band coverage only above 1 GHz on TX (broadband PA's are too expensive).
Around 2008-2009, I bought one of the AOR digital SSB doo dads when they were demonstrating them at Dayton. The demo sounded pretty good. It uses the normal 2.1 to 2.5 KHz bandwidth. Never got around to using it, but I see they still make them, at least. Opened the box a week or so ago and found the new carrier oscillator crystals for my 75S-3C that I had "lost".
I have enough boards built up to assemble a single band ( 20 meter ) SSB / CW receiver, but it is using a 10.7 MHz first IF, and the AGC is ... poor. It's derived from audio and all the experts are right - it makes lousy AGC action. I could tweak it a bit to match in and out of the 10.35 MHz filter set I have and eliminate a second conversion, or I could rob the 455 KHz Collins filters from that first little rig I built and slip them in the second IF.
That HP 200 oscillator that needs troubleshooting is looking like a potential home for all of it, and the low level transmitter parts. I finally got around to testing and cleaning up that Yaesu linear that sat on my bench for years without moving. That would make a decent final, or I could build a tube final.
I've read some posts that speculated on using a 6550 as an HF final tube, which sounded kind of interesting. The Chinese 6146B worked well in the SSE for audio, and I have one left with a little life that could be used for RF testing. I don't think I would put them in a vintage rig - the pins on normal 6146 are tapered, and the Shuguang are squared off. I would be afraid of damaging a vintage socket.
Win W5JAG
I have enough boards built up to assemble a single band ( 20 meter ) SSB / CW receiver, but it is using a 10.7 MHz first IF, and the AGC is ... poor. It's derived from audio and all the experts are right - it makes lousy AGC action. I could tweak it a bit to match in and out of the 10.35 MHz filter set I have and eliminate a second conversion, or I could rob the 455 KHz Collins filters from that first little rig I built and slip them in the second IF.
That HP 200 oscillator that needs troubleshooting is looking like a potential home for all of it, and the low level transmitter parts. I finally got around to testing and cleaning up that Yaesu linear that sat on my bench for years without moving. That would make a decent final, or I could build a tube final.
I've read some posts that speculated on using a 6550 as an HF final tube, which sounded kind of interesting. The Chinese 6146B worked well in the SSE for audio, and I have one left with a little life that could be used for RF testing. I don't think I would put them in a vintage rig - the pins on normal 6146 are tapered, and the Shuguang are squared off. I would be afraid of damaging a vintage socket.
Win W5JAG