| Boat Anchors |
|
| |
 |
|
| Heathkit DX-40 (1958) My boat anchor collection started with the Heathkit DX-40. A friend of mine, Bill N3WM gave me this rig. He was retiring, downsizing and moving out of the area. All it needed was a re-cap and replacement of the power supply bleeder resistors. One was open. A snubber circuit was later added to the function switch. |
||
 |
||
| Hammarlund HQ-170A (1962) After acquiring the DX-40, I wanted to pair it with a receiver from the same era. Back when I was studying for my Novice ticket I had access to a Hammarlund HQ-170A receiver at my college radio club. I fell in love with this receiver but could not afford one back then. I had to settle for a HQ-110A for my Novice receiver. |
||
 |
||
| Antenna change over and transmitter keying (Homebrew) After acquiring a boat anchor transmitter and receiver, I needed a VFO and a way to control the antenna change over and transmitter keying functions. The top box is a homemade DDS VFO based on N3ZI's design. It has 1 Hertz resolution and covers 0.5 to 30 MHz. A buffer amplifier was added to drive tube transmitters. The bottom box controls my boat anchor transmitters. It provides for antenna change over and keys the transmitter via a solid state switch driving a mercury wetted relay. Several morse keys can be connected in parallel. I like this design because the transmitter's function switch can be left in the transmit position but the transmitter cannot be keyed unless the switch on the right is in the TX position. |
||
 |
||
| Heathkit DX-60B (1967) I used the DX-40 on crystal control and the HQ-170A for a while, but wanted to re-acquire my Novice rig, the Eico 720. I kept an eye out for one on Ebay for quite a while, but didn't find one, so I settled for a Heathkit DX-60. It had a hum on AM. Replacing the capacitors in the low voltage power supply eliminated the hum. |
||
 |
||
| Eico 720, 722, 730 (1958) Several years after acquiring the DX-60, I finally saw an Eico 720 on Ebay. Several appeared around the same time. It took some work to get this one working with re-capping and component replacement. The solder joints on the meter switch were bad and the meter switch needed a good cleaning. After being used for several months, the power transformer started arcing to the frame. I was able to temporarily fix it but I eventually had to buy a second junker 720 for a replacement power transformer. I was very lucky to find one just for parts at a very reasonable price from a ham in Alaska. After getting the 720 working reliably I wanted to find the EICO 730 plate modulator for AM operation. Same story... there were none to be found for quite a while, then several appeared on Ebay. I was able to acquire one from a ham just 10 miles from my QTH. It needed new power tubes and a re-cap. Finally I needed the Eico 722 VFO to complete the station. About a year went by before one showed up on Ebay, then another shortly after that. I acquired one, tuned it up and am now using the combo on CW and AM. The 722 VFO is very stable once it warms up. This Eico combo carried me through my Novice days all the way to Extra. |
||
 |
||
| Johnson Viking Ranger 1 (1955) I acquired this Ranger 1 on a tip from a friend. It was listed on the local MARS auction web site for a very reasonable price. My initial plan was to restore it, but once I had it open and started trying to clean up all of the dirt and grime that had accumulated on the chassis I decided to have a professional do it. I looked around and found Chuck, K1TLI. Chuck did an excellent restoration job. As you can see, the Ranger is like new, in stock condition, except for the addition of push to talk (PTT). You can see my reflection in the front panel. |
||
 |
||
| Drake 2B and 2BQ (1961) The only rig left for me to duplicate my early radio days ham station was a Drake 2B receiver. I was introduced to the Drake 2B while I was stationed in Scotland and acquired one in 1972 after returning to the states. I acquired this one on Ebay. All it needed was a couple of tubes, accessory crystals for the 10 meter band, and an alignment. Back when I was looking for a receiver for my Novice station, the only manufacturer I knew was Hammarlund. When I went to purchase the HQ-110A, the store manager tried to talk me into buying a used Drake 2B. I knew nothing of Drake at the time and should have taken his advice. This receiver is still a great performer today and was way ahead of it's time. |
||
 |
||
| Knight Kit R-100A and T-60 (1962) The very first kit that I ever built (1967) was the Knight Kit R-100A receiver. This was to be my Novice receiver. I successfully assembled the receiver and used it un-aligned while studying for my Novice ticket. At that time I was studying electronics at Baltimore Junior College (BJC). After using it at home for a while to practice copying code, I took the receiver to the school's electronics lab and aligned it. I then took it to the ham club radio room and connected it to a dipole antenna. Shortly after doing this the receiver stopped working. Several weeks were spent troubleshooting the receiver with the help of my lab instructor who was a former ham. We were not able to find the problem. Allied radio had a very good return policy, so I wrote them a letter describing what had happened. Allied responded to my letter telling me to return the receiver for a full refund. I used the money toward the purchase of a Hammarlund HQ-110A. This R-100A was purchased on Ebay. When it was received, it did not work and hummed loudly. I acqured the assembly manual and completely rebuild it. It was torn down to the component level, cleaned, PC boards were disassembled and cleaned, and it was re-assembled with all new resistors and capacitors and aligned. It works nicely now. The T-60 was purchased on Ebay shortly after completing the R-100A. After re-capping, it has worked well. I added a fan to the back panel because it is very compact and runs very hot. |
||
 |
||
| Knight Kit T-150A (1963) I saw this T150A on EBay and the seller said that it blew a fuse. It appeared to be in good cosmetic shape and was priced to sell, so I took a chance and purchased it. When I received it, inspection showed that the builder of this kit did and excellent job and installed a built-in antenna changeover relay. I replaced the fuse and brought it up slowly on a variac and all appeared to be OK. It even tuned up on 40 and 20 meters with no problem but I noticed that the power supply filter capacitors got very hot. On 80M the VFO would not tune into the 80M band. I checked the tubes and they were all good. I replaced the power supply filter capacitors and installed a three wire line cord. I then completed the W8JI recommended T150 modifications. I found that the alignment of the VFO was good on 40M and above but it was way off on 80M. A complete re-alignment of the VFO 80M tuned circuit solved the problem. The transmitter now loads up on 80M through 10M, although on 15M and 10M final tuning is very critical. This transmitter had a reputation of having a drifty and chirpy signal. The VFO in this transmitter is pretty stable and does not chirp.... a nice surprise. |
||
 |
||
| Hallicrafters HT-40 (1961) and SX-122 (1962) I have never owned a piece of Hallicrafters equipment until now. The SX-122 caught my eye and was purchased on Ebay. When it was received, it hummed and worked poorly. It was re-capped but it had a stability issue with the frequency jumpimg around randomly. This was traced to the local oscillator. The 6C4 local oscillator tube has a history of problems and performance inconsistency. The 6C4 plate voltage was high and it was brought down to spec value and the 6C4 tube was replaced with a 6AB4 which solved the instability issue. An IF and RF alignment was completed and the receiver now works well. The HT-40 was purchased to pair with the SX-122. It did not work with a VFO as received. Several versions of the schematic were found. The oscillator circuit component values were changed and the coupling capacitors between the oscillator and buffer stage were reduced in value. These changes made the transmitter work well on crystal control, however, it is still a bit unstable when using a VFO on 80, 40 and 20M. My DDS and Eico VFO do not provide enough drive. Above 20M it works OK on crystal control. |
||
 |
||
| Hallicrafters HA-5 VFO (1962) and HA-1 T.O Keyer (1960) I had wanted the HA-5 VFO for some time but never saw any for sale. It is a very stable heterodyne type VFO. I finally found one, recapped it, installed a 3 wire line cord and did an alignment. It provides plenty of RF drive for my old tube transmitters. The HA-1 T.O. keyer was purchased from the same seller. It was re-capped, a few out of tolerance resistors were replaced and a three wire line cord installed. It was one of the first electronic keyers utilizing tubes. It has no dot or dash memory which takes some getting used to in order to use it effectively. |
||
 |
||
| Heathkit AT-1 (1951) This Heathkit AT-1 caught my eye on Ebay because it was in nice cosmetic shape and was Heathkit's very first amateur radio kit. It covers 80, 40, 20 and 10 meters. Hams did not have 15 meters in the early 1950s. The band wasn't opened to amateur use until late 1952. It would not load properly on 80M and put out strong harmonics. After studying the schematic I found that the 80M coil was missing a resonating capacitor. Once the capacitor was connected across the coil it tuned up and had much lower 2nd and higher harmonics. |
||
 |
||
 |
||
| World Radio Laboratories Globe Chief 90A (1956) This rig was purchased from a local Ebay seller. The price was very reasonable and the previous owner completely reworked it with a custom front panel (upper photo). I modified the oscillator circuit so that a VFO can be used with it and the value of the plate loading capacitor was increased so that it will load fully on 160 and 80 meters. I purchased the second Globe Chief (lower photo) because it appeared to be in good cosmetic shape and all original. |
||
 |
||
| World Radio Laboratories Globe Chief Deluxe (1960) The WRL Globe Chief Deluxe was the last amateur transmitter offered by Globe Electronics. It's a 90 watt input CW transmitter that can be configured for either cathode keying or grid block keying. This rig was purchased on Ebay, the price was right. It was very dirty. I stripped the chassis down, removed the grease and grime from the chassis, re-capped it and rewired portions of it. The front panel had a good amount of tartar build up from cigarette smoke. The front panel was cleaned and the cabinet was sanded and painted. It works well now on 80 through 10M. Power output is 60 to 50 watts. |
||
 |
||
| Drake 2NT and W-4 (1966) One of my last acquisitions was this Drake 2NT and W-4 wattmeter. I had to wait a while before one eventually showed up on EBay. This one is in good cosmetic shape and needed very little attention. This rig was a deluxe Novice rig in its day with a built-in antenna changeover relay, receiver muting and CW sidetone. It is crystal controlled with no provisions for phone (AM) operation. Drake never produced a VFO to go with it but it works nicely with the VFOs that I have. It will run 100 watts input power with 50 to 60 plus watts output on 80 through 10 meters. |
||
 |
||
| Drake R4A (1966) I could not turn down this Drake R4A. I looks almost brand new. The copper plated chassis is pristine, no corrosion. The seller said the AVC didn't work and the noise could not be peaked with the pre-selector except on 40 meters. This turned out to be a simple fix. Someone had moved the preselector pointer so that 40 meters peaked at the 20 meter position. After removing and installing the pointer in the correct position all bands peak where they should. The AVC needed a little adjustment and works just fine. A check of the alignment showed that it was very close. Some of the auxillary crystal postions did not work. A good cleaning of the switch corrected that. |
||
 |
||
| Drake T4XB (1968) After acquiring the R4A receiver I thought I might as well pair it with a T4XB transmitter. This one didn't come with a power supply so one was acquired and rebuilt with the Harbach printed circuit boards. The transmitter loaded up and put out plenty of power on CW but the CW note sounded like a ringing bell. It was re-capped and aligned but the CW note problem persisted. It was later found that the one microfarad capacitor that I had across the key terminals was the cause of this problem. I had previously discovered that this capacitor helped suppress contact bounce on the bugs that I use and it caused no problems on my old cathode keyed transmitters. Reducing the size of the capacitor cured the problem. |
||
 |
||
| Drake TR7 (1980) I found this TR7 on Ebay from a local seller. It was priced reasonably but I took a chance and offered 25% less for it. My offer was accepted and the rig was picked up at a warehouse not far from my home. This rig was one of the first all solid state transceivers. It came with the PS7 power supply which I am not currently using. The rig had issues with the VCO not locking up, so I sent it to a well known Drake repair guy, WB4HFN, who resolved all of the issues and did a complete alignment on it. The RV7 remote VFO worked fine, however, the PTO dial drive slipped. I found that there was a missing rubber spacer that fit on the PTO shaft that provided friction between the knob and skirt. I found a suitable replacement and it now tunes smoothly. This rig puts out 150 watts on all bands but 160 and 10 meters. On 160M and 10M it puts out a little over 100 watts. |
||
 |
||
| National NC-125 (1950) I have never owned a piece of National gear. The National NC-300, NC-303 and NC-183D are very nice receivers, but I really didn't want another 70 pound receiver to move around. When I saw this clean NC-125, I jumped on it. It's a basic receiver with some selectivity provided by the Select O'Ject, which is basically a Q-multiplier. As received it worked well and the dial calibration was pretty close, however the BFO did not work. It looked like the previous owner had replaced some compenents in the BFO circuit. I replaced the BFO capacitors and noticed that per the schematic, the BFO tuned circuit had its transformer tap wires reversed. Reversing the leads made the BFO functional. The receiver used a gimmick capacitor to couple BFO energy to the detector but the BFO signal was very low. I replaced the gimmick capacitor with a 5 pico-farad ceramic capacitor which resulted in higher BFO injection. Now the RF gain does not need to be turned way down to demodulate SSB signals. |
||
 |
||
| HF Signals uBitx v5 (2019) This rig isn't a boat anchor but I wanted to include it here. This QRP transceiver was a kit sold by HF Signals, It covers 80 to 10 meters and does SSB and CW. Output power is 11 watts on 80, 7 watts on 40, 5 watts on 20 and a little less than 5 watts on 15 and 10 meters. Since then two new versions of this transceiver have come out with color touch screens and some minor improvements. |
