AM IS KING!


Archives 2014

Archives 2013 Archives 2015 Archives 2016 Archives 2017

 
Return to AM is King
 

<Click Most Pictures To Enlarge>


Click the AM Logo to return to the top!

LATEST NEWS:

18 December 2014

Dave - K7IOU recently re-capped his Johnson 500 power supply and here's a couple pictures.


LATEST NEWS:

14 November 2014


Just in case you were hiding under the bed, last Saturday was the 3rd Annual Oro Valey Radio Club hamfest up in Marana and it was pretty good.  Click the logo to see a bunch of pictures.  I had fun.  Below are my treasures I purchased and they both work and not bad, either.  I think I have $15 in both.  Please ignor the dust.  de WD7F - John

LATEST NEWS:

20 October 2014



The Tucson Ham Picnic had 125 attending.  What a great turnout!  Click the picture!

LATEST NEWS:

15 October 2014

W1AEX - Rob 


Been working on the Johnson 500 and finally got it looking good with another final.  It sure acted strange - the rest of the story.  Here's a couple pictures of W1AEX - Rob I stole from QRZ.  Rob has a nice Apache Labs SDR and he recorded me a couple of overs and posted it on YouTube.  I think I'll leave it alone for now.  You can hear it here if you're interested:  PS: That's NOT the SDR, I would say what you see is a HDR, hardware defined radio, no?  And, when I was describing what K3TYE - Joe did to my Valiant with the choke in the cathode circuit of the oscillator/buffer, I misspoke during this transmission. It wasn't between the VFO and the buffer!  Duh!


LATEST NEWS:

3 October 2014

10 Meter AM has been open and I've worked a bunch of 'em in the last few days.  Worked Randy - KK3AM today and here's his picture. Nice looking Valiant II and 75A-4 there.  See the T-368 over his shoulder?

LATEST NEWS:

26 September 2014

AJ7O - Dave sent me a picture of his new Tentec rig.   Do you suppose his desk is always that clean?  Not sure this is AM news because it's set on 40 CW, however, I have heard it on AM, so it's OK.

LATEST NEWS:

24 September 2014

WA1BZQ - Bruce is back in the Boston area visiting family & friends and he took an excursion to Maine to visit his Mom.  When Bruce was a young ham back in Worcester (prounounced "Wooster") or somewhere around there, he came across WA1HLR - Tim.  This is the world renound Whiskey Alpha One H Yell R, as he says it.  Everybody knows "Timtron"!  Here's he is in his shack.  Someday you need to ask Bruce to tell you some stories involving Timtron and others back in the "Good Ol' Days!"  I talked to Timtron on 15 meters today and told him I'm putting his pictures up here.

 



LATEST NEWS:

18 September 2014

K7IOU - Dave got himself a new mike from swap.qth.com, an American D4TS Dynamic and it sounds pretty good.  Looks OK too! 

LATEST NEWS:

26 August 2014

K7IOU & I were searching around for a key for the Johnson 500.  His is OK, but a spare would be nice.  Mine works, but the key will come out in the "On" position.  He ran across a link for a promising switch/key but it was $70, here: http://www.wellgainelectronics.com/arrowhandhkeylockswitch3a250vac2pos-1.aspx
Then he found the same switch at Surplus Sales of Nebraska: http://www.surplussales.com/Switches/SWAssort-1.html
so I ordered a couple for $6.50 per plus shipping.  Got them yesterday and today, with Dave's skill and cunning, I have a new switch installed.  The key is locked in in the "On" position and it just great!  I suppose one of you enterprising guys will order all they have, right?

LATEST NEWS:

18 August 2014


KE7TRP - Clark sent me a few pictures of his equipment so here they are.  What I really need is a picture of Clark for the gallery.  I guess he's camera shy!



LATEST NEWS:

26 July 2014


I mentioned last posting that Dave - K7IOU & I had traveled to Mesa to pick up a couple of radios from W5WVI - Jon.   It took me a couple of days to figure out where to put the new hardware and it still needs a bit of tweaking. It's a "blivit"!  You know, 10 pounds of stuff in a 5 pound bag!  You can see the Johnson 500 on the right and the funny maroon colored power supply under the bench.  Had to put the 922 and the tuner on a box with casters, Also, the Valiant I procured from W7KDL - Dick is on the other box on the left.  I'm heavy metal poor, for sure!

The other picture is of Dave's Valiant.  It's very nice and has all the audio mods based on Timtron's recommendations.  Don't know what Dave was doing with that key!

 

LATEST NEWS:

20 July 2014

Last Saturday, 12 July 14, K7IOU - Dave and myself traveled up to visit W5WVI - Jon and managed to persuaid him to part with his Johnson 500 and a Valiant.  We had a good time getting both of them to work because Jon was in the middle of changing his shack, having removed the two rigs for inspection.  In any case, here are a few pictures I borrowed from the Arizona AM site so you can see what kind of a shack Jon was operating from.  Check out that 20V2 !!!!!  I looks as good as it sounds! And, not a bad Desk Killowatt in the Studio B!

 

LATEST NEWS:

24 August 2014

So, K7IOU - Dave tries out an app for his iPhone and takes this panoramic picture of his shack.  I think it would be neat if it actually looked like this.  Click the picture for a "real big one"!

 

LATEST NEWS:

25 June 2014

Dave - K7IOU and myself took a trip to Corona De Tucson and he brought back a pickup load of tubes, mostly TV & audio with a few we recognize.  While there I managed to buy a nice speaker for my AM listening.  It's an old Supreme Audio PA speaker with a gold colored metal grill, about 20" X 8" X 8" and came in a foam lined travel case.  It sounds very nice hooked to that JVC amp and the detector output of the 75A-4.  Also, I picked up a CW key from the WW2 era, a T17A Luftwaffe straight key used with an FuG 17 airborne radio.  Here's a link to a German Radio Museum that has the key.  It's item #5.

LATEST NEWS:

21 June 2014

K7IOU - Dave picked up a Ranger and a Collins 75A-3 from K0ETD the other day and he's got it on the air.  He's becoming quite a heavy medal collector.

LATEST NEWS:

14 May 2014

Came home from lunch today and turned on 7.293 and there was KM4RC with operator K3NT - Bob Kirby operating 40 meter AM Airborne Mobile in the only flying B-29 at the moment.  He and his team were on they way from Ft. Worth to Prescott at about 26,000 ft.  KC6ASA - Kirk, K3YAZ - Frank, K7IOU - Dave, XE2/W7ISJ - Joe and a couple of others worked him.  That old BC-348 with an ART-13 sounded pretty good.  He had some headset problems but overall, it was great!  How envious of Bob am I?  You shoulda' been on the air!  <Click Bob's picture for a link to the B-29 Radio site>

LATEST NEWS:

8 May 2014


Posting a couple pictures of my SX-140 that K0ETD recently played with and tweaked a bit.  A guy on QTH wants to see it.

LATEST NEWS:

28 April 2014


K7EWE - Jim tells me that he has a custom meter built for him by K3IAN - Jim who lives over in Los Lunes, New Mexico.  He said that KD7LGA - Kathryn took the picture of him about 5 years ago when he was on a snack break while digging the hole for his 160 meter vertical.  Interesting, no?  I'm not sure I'd want to look at my mug every time I checked the plate current on the Globe King!
 

LATEST NEWS:

26 April 2014


K7IOU - Dave received his Howard Mills R-390A.  Looks pretty good and the box costs almost as much as the radio.  Works great, though.  How about that speaker? You can hear yours truly on it here: 
 

LATEST NEWS:

4 April 2014

During the Arizona session of the W1AW/7 Centennial QSO party last month, SADXA members N7CL - Eric and N7BXX - Gail wanted to operate for the club on 160 meter CW but neither of them had the 160 capabilities.  So, our man K7EWE - Jim volunteered his station with his excellent 160 meter vertical and a low noise N7CL designed on the ground long wire for use in the contest.  The upper left shows N7BXX in the doorway, the upper right picture is Eric in the operating position.  Also shown is KD7LGA, (Little Green Apples) - Kathryn, who co-hosted the session.  It appears that Eric is operating and Gail is logging in the lower right picture.  All and all, it went on for three nights, but it was slow going.  Keep in mind that SADXA did NOT get to pick their time slots on 160 CW operation, as it were.  They still had a good time.  I wonder if they had a Honey Brown or two? Thanks Jim & Kathryn.  By the way, Arizona is scheduled for a week in August too.

Speaking of the ARRL Centennial QSO Party, KB7OCY - Henry, shown in his natural operating position, allowed KF7TLL - Bruce (the only picture I could find) to operate that monster on the right, affectionately know as Henry's "Globe Master" KW Am rig, for a night of AM on 3885 on Saturday, 15 March 2014.  Believe it or not, they scored 100 somthing QSOs on AM?  How about that!  Don't ya' just love it?  Check the last three issues of and you'll see the entire story of Hank's Globe Master.  Pretty neat!

 

LATEST NEWS:

31 March 2014

Just couldn't resist.  Picked it up from K7OBB - Dana at the RST swap meet Saturday.  This HQ-180 guy has a Main Tuning and then a Band Spread.  It's a bit different in that I've never messed with a receiver like this one.  There's a disclaimer in the manual basically saying there's no guarantee concerning what frequency you might be on or think you're on.  Fun!

 

LATEST NEWS:

25 March 2014

K7IOU - Dave is the proud owner of a very nice Johnson 500 and it's working great.  He purchased it from K7CMS - Bill about three weeks ago and after cleaning it a bit, adding a pilot light assembly and other minor maintenance, it's on the air. The 866s have been replace with candle stick diodes, ergo, no blue.  Dang!

LATEST NEWS:

9 February 2014

Looks like KC7ASA - Kirk & K3YAZ - Frank visited with K7EWE - Jim and had their picture taken with the Gates Walk-In 160 transmitter in Jim's garage.  Impressive, no?  Note that the entire cabinet is shown but where are Kirk's feet?  We know what is important!  Also, at the right is the new spot for the operational Globe King.  It's working great!


LATEST NEWS:

7 February 2014

K3IAN - Jim
Received this photo from Jim.  Quite a hunk of heavy metal, wouldn't you say? 


LATEST NEWS:

2 January 2014



K7IOU - Dave

We have a new AMer in our group.  He recently modified his ICom-756 to defeat the ALC so that it will modulate a bit better on AM.  He also put up a 75 meter full wave loop and since the IC-756 is running about 10 watts, he uses a 500 watt solid state amplifier he built from a kit to boost the output to a reasonable level of 200 watts or so of carrier.  I installed a 1k resistor in the wiper arm circuit going out to prevent damage to the pot if you get too close to the top.  I know it's not the normal operating position, however, you never know when a knob tweaker will turn it to the end.