A minor health panic screwed up the week’s operational plans around here, taking Friday List Items off the table for another week.  Still, some damn-fine adventures in the Home HandyBastard’s world of tool slut sales and grand designs for the future…

Radio Det. Case of the RTFM

I may have mentioned to you that the Radio Detective is a super-slut when comes to antique-ish ham radio gear made by the late Hallicrafters Company?  The two-bit lowdown on this outfit (from Wikipedia) is that it was founded in the Depression era:

William J. Halligan (1898–1992), founded Hallicrafters Company in Chicago in late 1932. Prior to this, he had been involved in radio parts sales for some years but decided the time was right for a handcrafted amateur radio receiver – the company name being a combination of Halli(gan) and (hand)crafters.

The Radio Detective himself cut his teeth (or was it ears?) on an old Hallicrafters S-20R which was in the 1939 genre. A favored uncle – who hasn’t been heard from in eons – worked at a Seattle electronics parts house in the 1950s and 60s.  From him, a small aluminum chassis and a single transistor plus a local oscillator adjustable coil (*to loosely couple to the 455 KHz intermediate frequency strip of the radio) managed to earn me QSL contacts from now non-existent places.  Rhodesia, Laos, and others were commonplace.

The parts were turned into a “Q-Multiplier” in short-order.  Tossing in a 9-Volt battery, headphones turned up more than they should have been, the radio was placed in the middle of the 80-meter novice Morse code band (3.715 MHz said an ancient Peterson crystal plugged into the Eico 723 transmitter) and the controls were slowly advanced.

Just before the experiment ran into the ditch, there was a slight change – almost like a ringing of the background static.  All of a sudden…

“YEOWMYGODWHATTHEHELL is that screaming???”

Ah. The joys of Q-Multiplier adjustments.  But that was the only “bad news”.  Operationally, that radio could pull signals from the Oort Cloud, given a chance.  Sadly, the radio plain sucked above the 15 MHz WWV time standard, but below that?   Smokin!

This led to a life-long fascination with Halligan’s children.  My modest collection (in various states of restoration) include:

• SX-101 (MK2 version, I seem to remember), with the matching HT-32 transmitter.  And the HT-33 linear amplifier.
• The next matched rigs are the SX-111 receiver and the HT-37 transmitter.
• While the top of the line is the SX-117 (a triple-conversion super radio), the barely worthy HT-44 transmitter and the coveted Loudenboomer HT-45 linear.
• There are other odds and ends: SR-150 (five band transceiver), SR-160 an only moderately used (wide as a barn door) tribander for 80, 40, and 20 meters.
• And a busted FTM-300 (or some-such) from the post-Halligan period when Northrop, which has bought out the Halligan family, itself bit the financial dust.

I don’t ever spend this much time on foreplay, unless there is a good radio story…which fortunately, there is.

The Late Model Twins

On the way out to the final smoke and cement wall of corporate America, the transitioning Hallicrafters company came out with a very much undiscovered pair of gems.  The HT-46 single sideband transmitter was nothing too special.  Not a lot of power, but a small footprint made up for it.

On the other hand, the single conversion SX-146 was a great little radio.  No, it will in no way compete with the high-end Rice Boxes (like the Icom 7851 with a huge high-resolution display on the front panel with computer, well, everything only a button press (or swipe) away.

But, with input from the late Lew McCoy (who was like the one-man band promoting single sideband with 9 MHz architectures in the 1950s, made possible with the loads of leftover WW 2 gear (the old Command Sets (ARC-5’s) and so on) the radio played well.  Very, very well.

We will skip the front panel (I have asked the Twins to pose when they come out of treatment) and jump right to the problem the receiver was having.  It didn’t work. Loose wires in the power supply area.

This is what confronted me when I opened up the radio.

Now let’s learn some serious radio shit, OK?

• Center foreground you can see a brown round thing.  That’s an electrolytic capacitor.  Whoever worked on this radio before I bought it had grown frustrated as hell, because the radio was not working. There are three tabs sticking up from the capacitor.  And everything ohmed out like it should.  I put it together again, using the cheapo component meter to confirm values because these caps do dry out over time.
• Tuning the radio on, it fired right up with some noise, but nothing was coming from the antenna.  “My, that’s not good.”  The Radio Detective’s trained ears told him the radio had high voltage, a tiny bit of hum, and the tubes were at least trying to work.  So WTF, right?

It’s here that old farts in ham radio (like me) and Hank and Wm of the Radio Ranch have a tremendous leg up on kids just entering the pro leagues of real electronical trouble-shootizing.

We know, for example that:

1. The SX-146 would “transceive” with the HT-44 transmitter.  It would take an additional cable, though.
2. We also know that few people have an innate understanding in the software madness of modern times to hark back to the Early Days when there were no menus and we did physical things with radios to make them work. Slide switches. It was Miraculous, trust me.

Since Ure’s library of Hallicrafters had the manual, a quick inspection of the schematic diagram told me all I needed by inspecting just a few likely trouble spots:

There are three – and looking at them left-to right will explain how this mystery was solved. Attention to the yellow circles

1. Upper Left: This is V8B, 1/2 of a 6EA8 Premixer.  Which we assume is before (pre) the Mixer tube.
2. Detecting to the middle (center) we see there is a switch that goes over to the (all disconnected when found dead) area of the power supply.
3. Where, zoom and swoon here, it connects to the well-filtered side of high voltage.

Follow along here.  DC power (which we have, per the hissing) goes through a switch, and then hits the screen grid which powers up the premixer. Which all begins to pencil out.  As in “Logically, Captain, no one would want two local oscillators (one in the receiver and the other in the transmitter) duking it out for control.”

Tell me more about this switch.

Oh, here it is, where the manual says it should be!

Case Solution

When found, the switch had been in the External Oscillator position.  And, since only a handful of the HT-44 transmitters were ever sold, the odds are near 100 percent that this is a hamfest (swap meet) bastard child, left in a basket on the last day of the meet-up.

Flip switch.  Now it works.

Case closed!

And thus, the case title:  RTFM – read the frickin manual!

(Well, except for the $40 worth of tubes because a number of the existing ones become 25-foot pistol range targets.  Though, in all honesty, my son (KF7OCD) is known to say “Dad, you couldn’t hit the side of a pair of 4-1000’s, side-by-side, in the dark at 10-feet – even with the filaments on.”

He’s more polite at fires and medical emergencies, I hope.  Such are the burdens of Radio Detecting.

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A further Radio Detective Note:

From reader D’lynne: America’s Last Morse-Code Station. Go grab the site info at this dandy site after you’re done here.  Maritime Radio Historical Society (radiomarine.org)

Pallet Shed Dreams

Yes, with a larger than expected tax refund coming, we could buy a large generator house (12X18 unfinished type deal) and have it installed where we want.  But we like “ready funds” and enjoy the challenge of minimalism.

The design is “How close to zero for a great generator shed, to get this sucker out of the shop?”

Now, meet the solar panel pallet that arrived last week.  This will become the “floor system” (with a sheet of OSB cut down on top).

42 inches by 67 inches long.  Call it 3-1/2 by 5-1/2 feet, should be plenty of room

On top of this will go assorted studs to hang cheap siding on, and two cheapo windows (singe glass, plastic from Amazon like these). And on Craigslist, a $100 grungy (but salvageable) exterior door was found.

All in?

• Piers and pallet  $0
• Two windows  $120
• Door    $100
• Misc. hardware: $60.

So, looking at it, can I get something better (and stronger) than this for $280?  Likely not. Another hundred and cheap siding….yeah, better than seeing real money leave.

Besides that, where’s the sport in writing checks?

Time to go bang something,

George@Ure.net (ac7x)