Larry, N8LP, wrote: Don't knock tubes. My first kit was a Harmon Kardon stereo amplifier with lots of tubes and no PC baord. It was great fun. I also built Dynakits and Heathkits with tubes. There's nothing like the smell and glow of vacuum tubes to warm your heart.
------------------------- I find something special about working with vacuum tubes as well, but then I was "raised" on vacuum tubes. Still, I've met some newer Hams who want to mess with tubes in at least a simple unit of some sort. A friend who really wanted to play with tubes and learn a little more about how receivers work inspired me to create a little hybrid superhet receiver that was described in a construction project in the November 2003 QST. It uses three tubes that were designed to operate at no more than 12 volts instead of the usual several hundred volts. I heard from about a dozen people who built them. It's gratifying that the interest is still there and that people enjoyed tackling the project. If tubes interest you, there are a number of e-mail lists for such enthusiasts who build gear from scratch and who restore old gear. One place to look is the Glowbugs, a mailing list for vacuum tube Ham enthusiasts. To subscribe to the Glowbugs E-Mail Reflector, send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the following command in the body of your email message: subscribe glowbugs youremailaddresshere The list runs on space on a server donated by the University of Idaho in the USA and is managed by Conard Murray WS4S ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). You'll run into several names and calls familiar around here, including mine <G>. One thing that concerns me about encouraging ops familiar with solid state to work with tubes is that most tubes operate with lethal voltages where there's only +12V in our Elecraft rigs. Not that low voltages can't do real harm, especially with a heavy-duty power supply. I've known technicians missing ring fingers because they carelessly poked around inside a live unit and let the ring touch a ground and a live, high-current 12 or 24 volt power buss at the same time. Still, high voltage demands a different sort of care and different procedures around equipment to be safe. Some of the most famous Hams of all time and far too many ordinary operators of my generation and before ended their lives with one careless move around the high voltages in their Ham rigs. One can be safe around high voltages, but it as different as climbing a fake rock face at the local sporting goods center and climbing El Capitan at Yosemite park. Out in the "real world" mistakes are much more dangerous. That was specifically why the little project I created for QST used the special low-voltage tubes. Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
