Interestingly enough, in the late seventies we were complaining about the lack of suitable outlets for homebrew projects. I didn't dcompletely buy it then nor do I buy it now. It's always required "ordering out" for stuff like ferrites, power transistors, and the like. It's not so bad, you just sit down and order and, voila!, in a few days you're in business. As far as the boards are concerned, there was a great project QST some years ago ago "A competition grade CW receiver", in which Doug De Mauw described using a dremel tool, or some such device to make little "islands" in which to solder the leads of the components. It worked beautifully, giving the builder the benefit of a great, useable groundplane surface area as well. Never having been entirely happy with QRP, in 1980 I built a homebrew, five band rig with a 9 MHZ single conversion design, using an Heathkit LMO as the VFO. It used the then "new" MRF 422's, and put out 200 very clean watts. I still use this rig with continuing pleasure, enjoying its dual time constant hang AGC and 24 poles of IF filtering (twelve in the receiver and twelve in the transmitter). It used the McCoy "Golden Guardian" 6 pole filters, one ahead of the IF strip and one after. Because manufacturing cost was not an issue, it was not necessary to bother with bi-lateral circuits or other such shortcuts. The point was, it worked beautifully, and was always a source of pride for me when hams who worked at the Naval Research Labs would come by to see the "homebrew project" of the ham who lived nearby on Bolling Air Force Base. The other, perhaps best, aspect of this was that, whenever a new design would show up for a mixer or something, in a few hours with the dremel tool and a soldering iron it would reside in the rig. Talk about high tech! I've never been an engineer or techno-geek kind of guy (recently reitired as concertmaster of the Marine Band), but such projects have never been out reach for hams who use even a tiny bit of ingenuity. Homebrew does not have to be dead, even now. Order your doubly balanced mixers, power devices and such, rely on a well-stocked Radio Shack and go for it. Regards, and thanks for this beautiful hobby, Merlin, W3ICT I think we build because of the adventure of it. I can't afford a 8-second drag race car, and my reflexes are a bit slow for Grand Prix Formula One. So? ---------I build my rig, whether it's a K2 or my own, and I ride a bike, either with a motor or not. That's almost enough excitement. _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
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