On 10/23/2011 12:12 PM, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote: > I had the impression that the rise of the Ham-band-only transceiver in the > 1950's and 60's was based on simple economics.
I have the GC BPF for my K3, and it works very well. There is still some press to be found on RTTY [usually 850 Hz shift], and sometimes I find the BBC. They have a lot of exposure here in the US via NPR and others, but it's fun to "hear it from the Mother Country occasionally." Sometimes I start copying the "numbers stations" just wondering whose spies I'm hearing :-)) I think the rise of the transceiver [vs separate tx and rx which had ruled ham shacks since the beginning of time] was the result of the KWM-2. Tuning SSB was hard on the receivers of that day, zero-beating your TX was even harder. When a box appeared that absolutely guaranteed you were transmitting on the same frequency as you were listening, hams embraced the concept [and SSB] almost fully [there were some AM holdouts, still are I guess]. Art's masterful scheme of a RX/TX covering 200 KHz around 3 MHz preceded by a crystal controlled converter for any 200 KHz range in the HF spectrum seems to have gotten everyone used to the idea of ham-band-only, although the KWM-2A with it's switchable crystal decks was by far and away the HF workhorse for the US Military in the 60's on other than ham band frequencies. The S-line was just a KWM-2 split into a RX and TX. A data point I'd sure like to see is how my K3 stacks up against the S-3 line I wish I had held onto. I had the 2.1 KHz and 500 Hz mech filters, I know there was a 250 Hz available, but I wonder how it would do with the blocking tests we now spend so much time scrutinizing. Not that I'm about to give up my K3 :-) 73, Fred K6DGW - Northern California Contest Club - CU in the 2012 Cal QSO Party 6-7 Oct 2012 - www.cqp.org ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
