sorry, y'all. *sigh* it was a long day.. 260 miles there, visit all
day, and 230 miles back, then back up by 8am to get on the air with the
locals.
So, yes... there were some of us that went to visit "The Ancient One",
one, K5SWK/Otis Nonken in Grangerland, Texas.
Otis has had some problem with his rig crapping out. Damn thing! I
just don't know what to say about Otis' building abilities... I mean,
really... build it in 2 weekends some 50 years ago, and then 50 years
later, a transformer or something decides to crap out. You just can't
depend on -anything- anymore (said with tongue planted FIRMLY in
Cheek!) :-)
John/WA5BXO, Jimmy/K5SOH, Perry/W5KGZ and myself, Geoff/W5OMR made the
trek to Nonkenville to visit with the old man, and to see what was up
with the gear. Bless John's heart, he's been getting Otis back into the
mindset of being back on the air. Now, y'all take note... while we will
more than likely get the transmitter fired up again, and working, that
doesn't mean that Otis *will* get back on the air. We're thinking,
though, that with the presentation by Larry/WD5CFJ of the little Alinco
DX70T ricebox, and an auto-tuner, that Otis is going to think, "if I'm
gonna get on the air, I wanna be back on with my own rig." It worked.
But, the rig has been dim for 2+ years and it came off the air then,
because of a problem in the high voltage power supply. Whatever it was
(trouble shooting still occuring) burnt a wire in two, in his Vari-AC.
I took over another 220v Vari-Ac thinking he could wire around it, and
leave it on the floor... just something to get the rig back on with, but
that didn't happen. Ken/KA5RHK brought one down, and it was identical
to the one that Otis put in that transmitter, nearly a half-century ago,
and it's still in good shape!
So, John has Otis' 833 final in his possession and is going to replace
the bias transformer, along with re-creating some low-voltage for
regular firing.
After that, I'm sure there still needs to be some work done in the B+
section, but whatever the high-voltage short is, it certainly was
drawing beaucoup current on the secondary of the plate transformer, but
not showing any Voltage at the final level.
Never fear, gentlemen(*), if -anyone- on this planet knows that rig as
well as Otis does, it's a spunky, young, "Boraxo Kid", known as John/WA5BXO.
(* = and if there are any ladies reading this, please excuse my
exclusion as it is certainly not intentional.
Then again, no woman that I know of, has made her presence known here, yet)
Again, even if the rig is -fixed-, getting Otis -on- the air... well...
that's a horse of a different corral.
After we disbanded from Otis' abode, Perry drove on back to Beaumont and
Jimmy, John and I caravaned over to the Amateur Ham Shack of
WA5BXO/WB5PKD in Willis, Texas.
We fired the rig up.
John's push-pull 250TH rig, x 4-813's in push-pull parallel was really
'carrying the mail' last night. A Whopping 300watts of carrier output,
and right at 1500w PEP thanks to a WaveNode computerized monitoring
system.
I don't have the log in front of me (it's 240 miles to the east of here)
but we had in the shack, WA5BXO, K5SOH, W5OMR, and BJ/WB5PKD. The four
of us worked OJ/KE5ERI in Little Rock, AR, Jim/WD5JKO in Round Rock,
TX, Sammy/W5DPP in College Station, TX, Lum/K5AYD in Cache, OK,
Ken/KA5RHK in D'Queen, AR, Jerry/N5CBW and I *know* there's someone else
or more I'm leaving out. But, we had a -great time and a nice
round-table for about 2 hours, or so.
Looking forward to Winter time conditions again, when we can do this at
night and have breakers in from coast to coast.
...and hopefully, K5SWK will *want* to be back on the air....
So, keep that radio tuned to 3880 on your AM dial, and stay tuned...
;-)
--
73 = Best Regards,
-Geoff/W5OMR
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