I’ve been toying with electronics for about as long as I can remember – as a kid, building crystal sets by the dozens, 1T4 single-tube radios and finding countless ways to play with 
old carbon telephone handsets and batteries. Growing up in the 40′s and 50′s in Corpus Christi, Texas, I had a chance to play with a lot of WW II military surplus electronics equipment. The huge Naval Aviation Base (NAS) located in Corpus generated tons of surplus electronics in the area. I converted a lot of it before I even thought about getting my ham license. Some of the gear I fondly remember are the ARC-5 receivers, Command Set transmitters, BC-611 walkie-talkies, SCR-522′s (a great police receiver in those days), Pogo-Stick transceivers, BC-610 transmitters and ATK/ATJ iconoscope television cameras that were used in the first-ever smart bombs developed toward the end of WW II.
The first time I got one of the old ATK cameras working, I’ll never forget seeing a bird sitting on a telephone pole (showing up on my old Westinghouse converted television monitor) . The 50 pound camera just happened to be pointing out the window when I first flipped on the 100 pound power supply I had scrounged together from spare parts. The bird was tweeting away and looking all about as if she knew someone was spying on her. 
This occurred long before VCRs and CCD cameras were invented and just shortly after image orthocons and vidicon tubes were introduced. Having my own television camera was about as good as it got in those days. The image was incredibly good for the iconoscope tube and 4″ diameter lens. In fact, a year later I acquired a vidicon tube and made my own camera from scratch and the ATK was giving just as good resolution. It was an impressive piece of old technology.
My older brother got his ham license in 1955 (or thereabouts) and still has his license although he is not a particularly active ham these days. Most of the surplus equipment I converted for my brother’s use and some for his friends who were hams and still more just for my own amusement. I always enjoyed it when my brother fired up an 80 meter Command transmitter that I had converted by rewiring the filaments to 12 VDC from the normal 28VDC army/air corps voltage. Hearing the old dynamotor whir when he keyed down was a real thrill for me and listening to the companion ARC-5 receiver come alive gave me a great sense of accomplishment even though the conversion processes were usually very easy.
In about 1952 (I was 10-years old) I was able to get my hands on a pair of EE-8 army field phones in brand new condition. These had a cowhide leather case and were beautiful instruments still in their wax-covered military protective sacks. A friend who lived down the block – about a quarter-mile away – and I gathered up enough wire to make the trip down the utility alley a strung a single wire between 
our houses. We actually used the existing telephone poles and a few trees to keep our wire about ten to twelve feet in the air – well below the power lines and a little lower than the telephone wires. We used our copper water pipes for one side of the signal path and while we had a little 60-cycle hum we could crank those old phones and carry on conversations on our own telephone system. We used them for about a year until some telephone guy came and told us he would have to remove the wire. But, he was quite impressed with the way we insulated the wire using old glass insulators and strain-relief clamps and he even wound up our wire and returned it to us intact. He jokingly told me that he would hold a job open for me. I always wondered what I had done with those old field phones and recently at my fiftieth high-school reunion a pal came up and reminded me that I had traded them to him for an old radiosonde he had found in a tree. I was forever trading my stuff away. About two years ago I bought 3 of the old EE-8 phones off of EBay and they are still in my closet. They are in almost pristine condition and the prices keep going up so I may sell them when the price is right. I still haven’t hooked them up but I’m sure I will very soon. They sure do beckon me. I made a good profit buying and selling some BC-611 handy-talkies. I always made sure they worked and made my own B+ battery packs using 9 VDC batteries. I’ve bought and sold PRC-10 backpack transceivers and some other Korean War electronics as well. I love repairing these old radios and making sure that they operate as originally designed. I’ve rebuilt a few R-390 receivers in my time and a dozen old surplus aircraft ARC-5 receivers.
I first got my license in 1963 (W5CDS) and let it expire. In 1986 I retook the tests and became KB5DIX (vanity K5FNW) and currently hold a General Class license. I may upgrade since the theory and Morse code (20 wpm) required is pretty easy for me. I just don’t have a compelling reason to go take the tests. Much is changing in the amateur-radio world these days. Before long, tests may be entirely unnecessary. The Morse code requirement is probably going to be eliminated except for a few license classes. That’s okay with me if we can attract a lot more folks into the hobby. It seems unfortunate to me that fewer and fewer young people are getting interested in the hobby. I guess with cell phones and the web not too many folks think ham radio is necessary these days. But, as any Red Cross disaster team might tell you in times of emergencies, ham operators are often times the only communications capability they have in an area wiped out by floods, tornados and hurricanes
I have always loved home-brewing (building my own electronic stuff from scratch) as many of my toys as possible. Unfortunately old age has caught up to me and designing and etching circuit boards isn’t as much fun as it used to be. I’ve built much of Dr. Ralph Taggert’s (WB8DQT) weather satellite gear, my own phone patches, electronic keyers, several RTTY/FAX demodulators, a couple of repeater DTMF autopatches/controllers, gazillions of power supplies and oodles of gadgets. I built my first 40-watt novice CW transmitter using a pair of 6L6′s. I’ve never built my own HF receiver from scratch, but I’ve built plenty of preamps to get a hotter receiver front-end and VFOs for old AM gear. I’ve built a lot of Heathkit gear over the years ranging from their lunchbox transceivers and test equipment to my first computer – an H8. I first learned how to program computers using my beloved H8. HERO, the Heath robot used to occupy space and keep me company in my shack but I sold him on E-Bay recently. Today, I still have a garage that overfloweth with junk but my middle-aged eyesight doesn’t allow me to enjoy tinkering as much as I used to. Using surface mount components are almost out of the question for me although I still enjoy bread boarding simple IC circuits from time to time. For many years my shack consisted of a ICOM 821H SSB/FM satellite xcvr, Yaesu FT-100 HF, Yaesu FT-890AT HF,Yaesu FT-5100 FM dual bander and several pieces of MFJ gear and a whole garage full of doodads. Today, it blows my mind that a complete 100-watt HF, 6 mtr, 70 cm, 2 mtr all fits in a tiny little package not much bigger than a bugger.
My fixed-base antenna is now an Alpha-Delta fan dipole and a Dual Band Ringo up at 35 feet. I recently sold my Yaesu azimuth/elevation rotor setup using M-Squared crossed yagis for OSCAR communications and the ICOM 821H to a local, younger ham. While I have listened to ham-rated astronauts on the Shuttle, MIR and now the ISS space station, I have never actually talked with them although one time I thought the Shuttle heard me calling CQ shortly before LOS. I have been able to work all of the satellites to/thru which I can legally communicate. I have used AO-27 and FO-29 many times. I also keep my ancient IC-02AT (2 mtr) handy-talkie charged, although I don’t know why. I rarely use it. During the mid nineties I assisted in calling the Daytime Texas Traffic Net once a week and thoroughly enjoyed participating.
My mobile radio fits neatly in our car’s center console. Mark (NM5K) came over and practically installed the entire system for me. I can’t thank him enough because I could never have done it alone. The FT-100 xcvr and FC-20 auto tuner are located in the trunk and he ran the YSK-100 remote head kit into the console. When it is closed you can’t even see any radios in our front seat cabin. I am running it into a Perth Outbacker for HF (barefoot) and into a dual-bander mag-mount for 2-mtrs and 70-cm.
We have an autostart, natural gas fueled, Guardian 17.5-KW generator that will allow me to operate my gear under some emergency conditions. One of my pledges is to become more active with ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service), at least as far as the local, SE Texas nets will allow. Just to stay as current as I can manage, I subscribe to QST magazine and kibitz local repeaters. Since Betty always drives, I can just sit and rag-chew all day long. I can spare her the noise using my headset and boom microphone. I’ve tried to become much more active checking into the 7290 and Texas Traffic Nets after being off the air for almost 2-years. One last thing – the Outbacker gives me 1.5:1 SWR from 75-10 meters and that ain’t too bad for a mobile, trunk-lip mounted antenna.
Here’s a little story of one repair I made to my HF rig. I called it My Old Shaky Hands and Failing Eyesight. I wrote it on 7-10-2000.
I suppose that the following is a story of devoted love for an inanimate object: My trusty Yaesu FT-890 AT HF ham radio transceiver.
I purchased my little transceiver in about 1988 from Ham Radio Outlet. It has been a real workhorse going from a fixed base to a mobile unit and back to fixed on many occasions. It has never failed until April 2000. I truly love my little 890 AT – the one with the auto antenna tuner built-in. I can hardly understand why Yaesu quit making this all-in-one package. It is one of the finest HF radios I ever owned and I grew up with MultiElmacs, Hallicrafters, Hammurlund, Heath and Collins S-Line gear. Arguably, this is old tube junk but it was state-of-the-good-stuff in its time. What sold me on the Yaesu transceiver is its incredibly small size and the inboard antenna tuner. This rascal gives better than 1.5:1 on a cheap, G5RV from 160 to 10 meters. That’s not too shabby.
PROBLEM
The problem began as a loud static that appeared over the receive audio. Before going any further let me say that the transmitter portion of the transceiver has never hiccupped or failed. An additional dilemma of the noise problem’s cause (facing any repair person) was that the static only appeared sporadically and there seemed to be no way we could cause the problem to rear its ugly head. We thought that we had to wait for the problem to occur. I sent the radio to Yaesu (California) for repair and they said they could not find any problem in the radio. To be fair, it didn’t act up for them so they had nothing to trace and repair.
About $189.00 later (after UPS shipping back and forth from Houston to California and adding the Yaesu technician’s estimate charges) I just decided to try to trust the rig to last for a week or two before having a complete hernia. I was ignoring the problem hoping that it would hold off for a while – maybe a week or so. I went ahead and put the radio in our Dodge van for a vacation trip, turned it on for a quick test and the radio immediately began doing its nasty thing. I was hoping the problem was my imagination. I bee-lined it over to Houston Amateur Radio Supplylistening to the awful static and noise all the way to the store. I finally bought a new Yaesu FT-100 from George for the trip. Betty and I were leaving (the next day) on a long-planned, extended drive through Texas and I didn’t want to be without a mobile rig. Also, I’d been eyeballing the ads for this rig for a long time because I knew that it would replace all 3 of the radios in my current mobile installation and I would no longer need to haul my FT 890 out to the van every time we took a little trip. Since George has a good reputation as a repair technician, he convinced me to leave the radio with him to evaluate while I was traveling. I could hardly wait to call him when we got home – hoping that he had solved the riddle. But, as luck would have it, the radio didn’t act up during the entire 2 weeks it was in his shop. I really was starting to feel paranoid. Why was this little radio – which I truly loved – causing me so much grief?
GUESS I’M NOT TOO OLD AFTER ALL
After our vacation, I brought the radio home (another $25 checkout charge for George) and made a beautiful 5/9 contact on 15 meters with Bob in the UK. The radio didn’t act up at all for over an hour. But, the next morning I turned on the radio and BEHOLD! – it started acting up immediately. Now I was getting mad.
Years ago, I used to be a pretty decent bench technician, repairing anything electronic from TV’s to fish finders and I’ve homebrewed all my life. So, brazenly, I decided to tackle the repair problem myself even though my middle-aged eyesight requires me to use magnification eyeglasses and my hands are a little more shaky these days. I really felt that I was probably too old to tear into my beloved HF rig. I figured I would do more damage than good. SMT haunts me.
I am certain that all of the guys who looked at my radio and heard my tale of woe had the same thoughts – “…either this guy has transmission line noise at his QTH or he is a purist or he is just plain nuts…” They had no idea how many “tests” I had already run to eliminate interference causes and they never got the chance to hear the noise for themselves. I’m certain that any technician could have solved this problem if they could have had the radio act up in their presence. The static would completely drown out reception and would stay in the audio even turning the RF ANT gain fully down. That kinda told me that the problem was likely to be in the audio stream somewhere and hopefully not in the receiver front end.
My bride (XYL) Betty came up with the idea that she could get the schematics enlarged at Kinko’s. It turned out that it was the best suggestion since the invention of the wheel. The originals that came with my user manual were tiny little doohickeys that even taxed my magnifying glasses. The blowups are wonderful.
Now that I could look over the schematics with ease, I got a little bolder. I opened up the transceiver and started looking at some TP waveforms on my rarely used oscilloscope…just to get a preliminary feel for the board(s) layout and locate where stuff was. I prayed, “Lord please help me…don’t let these feeble, shaky hands ruin all those tiny wiring harnesses.” I felt like the proverbial bull in the china factory. I just planned each move very carefully and found that I could actually move around inside the rig. I kept reminding myself to be careful.
COAXING THE PROBLEM TO OCCUR
Cooling and heating components has always yielded good troubleshooting results for me so I started cooling components one at a time. I use a straw to isolate the component I am trying to cool. Coolant spray can diffuse in many different directions and cause other components to react. I press the straw over the small transistors, caps and diodes and isolate the coolant to the individual components I’m blasting. Nothing on the RF board seemed to do anything. I finally got to the LOCAL UNIT board and also did some “tapping” of components to see if I could discover something loose or cracked – a circuit board trace cracked – anything.
Then I tried some coolant spray and BEHOLD! – I hit pay dirt. A little IC ( Q1049 M5201L – ACT FIL)started acting microphonic (like an old tube). I could scratch it with my fingernail, even blow on it, and it would almost act like a microphone. As the device warmed it would begin a little motor-boating sound and finally the static – the main problem – would show up. I found that I could create the problem with short bursts of coolant to the IC nearest pin 1. At least I now had a real PROBLEM that I could identify, create and observe. I still wasn’t convinced that it was the IC that was failing. I’ve had mica capacitors become microphonic on me in the old tube days so I carefully checked several caps in and around Q1049. Nothing. So, I ordered a new IC from Yaesu and asked for overnight delivery: $1.36 for the IC and $24.00 for overnight. Go figure.
HAPPY DAYS
Well, the IC arrived today and I soldered it in. Now the FT890 runs like new. The problem has been solved and my little puppy is, once again, firing on all four – just like new. My rig is still in use today (2011).
I remember the days when some friend had an intermittent problem with their TV and they would ask me to fix it for them. I would “cook” the sets for days before the problem reared its head. Sometimes I went searching for a faulty part based on what they described as the symptom and used my trusty freeze spray like I did on the 890. These kinds of quirks, that don’t show up at the most opportune time, often have to be coaxed into misbehaving. I guess if someone all of a sudden froze my nose I might get a little fretful, too.
Please give me a shout if you ever hear me yakking because I love old-time rag-chews – Kilo-five-feeble-nit-wit.
73′s
GeezerJoe
