I ordered a bunch of parts from antique electronic supply, and they arrived today. I got 4 KT90 tubes, very nice tubes, a pair can do 165 watts out at higher voltages! I got a bunch of Hammond transformers, chokes, RF chokes, and some 7 and 9 pin tubes. All the parts will be used for the homebrew 40 meter transceiver. I was surprised that they had tube sockets for 4D32 tubes, new ones, nice ceramic ones.
I got a nice 6.3 volt filament transformer at 16 amps, and its quite small in size considering the current. Four KT90 tubes and two 4D32 tubes will draw about 15 amps! I got a nice small 5 Henry 150ma choke for the receiver power supply, a hi fi 10,000 ohm to 8 ohm 10 watt transformer to drive the KT90 grids with. A lot of iron is populating the chassis, and this thing is going to be heavy, even with the high voltage power supply outboard. I need to get the crystals, crystal sockets, HV brick diodes, receiver IF filter board, and some other odds and ends. Except for the receiver, this is all from scratch, and I doubt it will go together without any extra holes and mistakes... Seems like a big project, with the separate power supply, and will likely keep me busy all winter! On a side note, I had a good time on 40 last weekend, talking with some people I never talked with before, or for a while. There was some confusion though, because there was another qso going on, and one guy was transmitting on 7290, the other was transmitting on 7295... I have noticed what seems to be an increase in poor operation in the AM windows, wide signals, people drifting all over, people transmitting with very little audio on the carrier, not zero beating the other signals, bad cases of RF getting into the mike, excessive splatter, serious VFO problems, etc. It seems like many people don't have a scope, freq counter, mod monitor, or a stable vfo. Seems to me, a good way to monitor what is going on is important. Some way to tell if the audio is up to high, crappy sounding, etc is impossible without some way to monitor or measure things. I wonder why all this is on the increase lately. Brett N2DTS
