Concerning advice on tools, if you please. km6x7.

[tonequester]

tonequester here.

Happy to make your "aquaintance" km6x7. I really appreciate your post concerning ideas on soldring irons, meters, scopes, and the like. You gave many
good ideas. I plan to check around my vacinity about the Ham equipment. I once knew a Tech at Deluxe Check where I used to work. He was a damned good one. I
was just getting into some basic electronics for use in repairing and modifying my guitars and amps, stereos and the like. I talked to him frequently, and he was always ready with good advice and many unconcentional ways to trouble shoot, usually with only a good meter. He was old school, and had gotten his education the Ham radio
way. He thought it a great program, but he warned me...."there's one bugaboo......the Code !". Much later I checked out one of those ARRL Handbooks( I think that's the
title ) and I quickly realized why he so knowledgeable. Hey ! Thanks again for helping a "newbie" like me. It's greatly appreciated. tonequester.

[km6xz]

You are welcome! Note that code is no longer required yet many people prefer it since it is so efficient and very simple home made equipment work well. Now digital modes are pretty popular now also.
Good luck!

[Steve Conner]

-.-- .- -.-- ..-. . .-. -.-. --- -.. .

I got my license before the code requirement was done away with, but I'm glad they did away with it. Ham radio needs all the help it can get.

[Enzo]

I learned my electronics doing short wave. As much as I was interested in radio, having to learn a code I never intended to use was the whole reason I never got my ham ticket. Much resistance to dropping the code I fear was the existing ham community not wanting to let someone in without going through that. Sort of a hazing thing, sorta.

I did know the code though. My freshman year at college, living in a dorm on a very large campus, one night I started using the venetian blinds to signal out CQ CQ CQ. Really surprised me when a few moments later one of the windows in the girls' dorm across the street started signaling back. We exchanged a few brief messsages, then exchanged phone numbers, and that was the end of our morse code. Oh, and nothing ever came of it, I never even met the girls there.

So for one shining moment I "worked" Akers Hall Dormitory on line of sight.


Don't recall but a few letters of the code these days.

[tonequester]

tonequester here.

Great story Enzo. If you had joined the Navy, they might have had you signaling ship-to-ship. With my memory, I tip my hat to anyone who ever learned the "dreaded code". Also, with the advice you've shared since I've been using this forum, it doesn't surprise me that you went that route in your training. The Handbooks(ARRL I think) are pretty
awsome. tonequester.

[Enzo]

The ARRL handbook was worth every penny. It comes out fresh every year - or at least used to - and I bought a new copy every couple years to keep up to date.

[tonequester]

to the library,...Batman !

The ARRL handbook was worth every penny. It comes out fresh every year - or at least used to - and I bought a new copy every couple years to keep up to date.

tonequester here.

Enzo. I believe that I'll check to see if my local library still has the handbook. It seems that years ago there was an order form in each one. If so, I may just order one. If I remember correctly, they always had plenty of basics, in addition to the whole transmit/receive thing. Steve Conner made the comment that he didn't think that they were so intent on one's learning Morse code anymore. It might make a good textbook for me. If you feel it was that "handy", it's good enough for me.
Thanks for the "review". tonequester.

[km6xz]

Find an old copy at a used book store, they were had good sections on tubes and building with tubes. Or check with the local ham club, they will probably give a copy away if someone shows an interest in what was once considered the most exciting hobby for children and adults in the 30s,40s and 50s.
After Sputnik was launched, the US was in shock, and unlike today, could at the time band together and change things. The 50s was a radical time of great change in the society with a sense of common purpose. For example the middle class was created, the highway system was built even before a lot of people figured out what to do with it, and the GI Bill of Rights transformed the country to a middle class dominated society. One of the sudden measures to get back the national pride lost to the Soviets was to make science and engineering a priority. Every high school in the country got a ham radio station with federal funds, mostly Hammerlund receivers and Johnson transmitters and Hygain antennas.
Science and math became a passion for millions of kids who were motivated by curiosity, instead of now, only by money, to discover something. Science fairs and competition because subjects for national media coverage. That sudden emphasis on science was the direct progenitor of the moon landing and Silicon Valley and all the innovation that helped the economy zoom past the rest of the world. Other countries are doing similar things that the US did back then to create a strong middle class so expect good things from them.

As a country we have been coasting on the growth of the 50s and 60s and no real income increases or market share of ideas since the 1970s. There is a direct link between kids being motivated by curiosity and action and the future well-being of a country. Ham radio was one of the important tools in that. I remember science clubs and radio clubs grew so large as after school activities that sometimes meetings needed to me moved to the basketball court to accommodate them.

Code was not hard but I did not learn it effectively for a long time, it delayed my getting a ham license until I was 10 years old. I did not know anybody who was a ham so did not have a way of taking the test anyway until I wandered far out of my neighborhood in the suburbs of Sacramento and spotted a old wooden wagon wheel on a porch as a decorative display of the address and 2 sets of call letters on it.W6EPG and K6TYJ. It took several trips back to get up my nerve to know on their door.
An old woman came to the door(I thought she was really old but probably in her 50s, I was 8). I asked if she was a ham and she opened the screen door while yelling to unseen people in the background "Johnny, here's another one" while motioning me inside and led me to an extention built onto the house that was radio club house adjoining a garage converted to workshop, lab. The radio room was full of people from 12 to 60 years old. Some were tuning on the radios, other's building things in the shop. Jonh E. Tayor was a electrician for the Southern Pacific RR and a ham since the 20s. He mentored dozens of young people and adults who in turned found others to mentor and I found out that this clubhouse was a Mecca for kids like me.
I was asked in a gruff cigar smoke puff covering his lips "what do you want and what is your name?" I said I wanted to be a ham. I had already read every book in the library on electricity and electronics but never had a chance to talk with people who knew about it or even how to pronounce the names of the parts I was building radios and amplifiers with. He replied, "go in there" and pointed to the workshop. Another adult was in there working on a tube short wave receiver and just picked up where Johnny left off, "what do you want, here, fix this" and handed me a meter with a broken knob. Soon I was teaching electronics to new arrivals, often 4 times my age, now that I knew even how to pronounce the names of parts and theory.
I was in heaven, a real oscilloscope, a bunch of old test gear, a drill press, metal shear, and brake, piles of sheet steel and aluminium, and hundreds of wooden cigar boxes full of parts that were all carefully labeled, everything to make electronic projects.

I had tried learning the code alone but Johnny's second hobby was old organs and had a large 3 rank Wurlitzer in the living room. He used the organ for weekend recitals by a house mate he adopted, another old ham who had fallen on hard times. Also named John, the guy was a whiz on the organ and played professionally in theaters and ball parks since the twenties. He got a gig playing at a large hotel ballroom through Jonnny's efforts so was feeling pretty good about his future. He was assigned to test my code on the organ and found I had some weak spots but basically knew the letters.
Over a month or two of after school training to listen to code as a musical sound instead of dits and dahs to be counted, I was ready to take my test. I passed the code portion and the technical part of the exam was a breeze. I was 9 by the time I took the exam and anxious to get on the air. I was building yet another transmitter so I was ready.
It seemed like forever to get my license in the mail, in fact it never came, I waited everyday by the mail box waiting for the mailman. Each day he apologized for disappointing me again. finally, as summer was approaching and the annual vacation to our beach house would take me away for 6 weeks, after which I would be put on a train and sent up to the mountains where all my relatives lived, and spend another 6 weeks exploring the mountains, hiking fishing and just being wild in nature alone. That was the traditional summer vacation and I was very upset that my license was not here yet. One day the mailman gave me a phone number to call, it was our local congressman's office. I had my dad call, and he told them of my plight, by summer's end it would be a year in waiting.
My dad handed me a slip of paper about a week later and said it was mine. It was a call letter set, he said the congressman contacted the FCC and the license application had been misplaced so the congressman requested a full report and resolution of the situation in a week. That got them on it apparently because I got my actual license in the mail a few days later, a week before the departure for the ocean. By the time it arrived I had just turned 10 two days before. I raced to my bedroom lab and fired up my receiver and newest home made transmitter and coded out CQ, a call for conversation. Within a few minutes another kid, 12, answered from Montana. I stayed on the air all night and the next day until I feel asleep at the operating desk with the code key under my right hand. My second foreign ham to talk with by code was a student at the radio institute in Moscow which started my interest in learning about some of the exotic places I was hearing and talking with. We exchange post cards, confirming the contracts, called QSL cards. Sometime it took months to arrive. I had a good location for Europe and South Pacific islands so talked many times to Russia, Scandinavia, UK, Germany towards the east and tiny islands few people ever heard of in the Pacific, where I talked to Senator Goldwater, King Hussein of Jordan, the King of Thailand, and more interesting people and places. That started my interest in travel and why I ended up in 86 countries and now live in Russia.
I remember that about 1/2 my HS graduating class went on to become engineers or scientists. It was a different era and I can't remember anyone who said their vocation choice was related to money. No MBA candidates or Wall Street types, just excited kids wanting to discover something or design something great. What a change in society since then, an unfortunate change, but one we did to ourselves.

[Enzo]

It should be easy to find an ARRL Radio Amateurs Handbook. In fact I will go look. Wait here...

Yep, ARRL sells them themselves: ARRL :: What's New

But that is just the 2012 edition, which would be fine, but it includes very little about tubes anymore

If you found an old one from 1957 or 1962 or whatever, there would be mostly tubes. The basics are in there too, and current and voltage and resistance are timeless.

Amazon.com lists it. And like most books there, they also give access to places selling them used. I see used ones there for $20. But that was a 2011 version.

If you want to learn from it appropriately for tube amps, I recommend an older issue of it, and like Stan says, check with the loocal ham clubs or visit a ham fest. Might find an old one cheap or free.

ARRL activity is a lot stronger in the ham community than anything is in guitar amp land. so they have the ARRL as a central organization, we have nothing comparable. Here is a link to a find-it page for ham fests and conventions:
Hamfests and Conventions Calendar

[km6xz]

Wow, talk about times changing.....the new Handbook is $59 and my first one, which I saved lawn cutting and lemonade stand money for weeks to get my first handbook in 1959 for the princely sum of $3.50. I was so proud of it, I took it to school Show and Tell where all the guys thought I was suddenly so cool!

[Enzo]

The modern one is in a large format. Seems to me up to somewhere around the end of the 1950s they had been using a small format. About the size of a paperback book, but a lot thicker. Then they went to the mid-size format for a while.

[madkatb]

@tonequester
If you're serious about wanting an old ARRL Handbook I have a 1957 copy in fairly decent shape. Yours for a small donation to the Forum (apparently they sell for $15 so say $5-10?). PM your address.

[tonequester]

@tonequester
If you're serious about wanting an old ARRL Handbook I have a 1957 copy in fairly decent shape. Yours for a small donation to the Forum (apparently they sell for $15 so say $5-10?). PM your address.

tonequester here.

Hello,madkatb. Thank you for your offer on the '57 ARRL Handbook. How about I donate $7.50 to the forum ? That splits the difference on your price quote.
I see the green colored Donate selection on the task bar above, and asume that's where I've got to go to accomplish this. I'll check it out after I finish the replies I'm working on
now. I have to warn you about one thing. I don't use plastic on the internet. I'll be happy to send them a postal money order if they'll take it. Thanks for the offer. You can wait for proof that I paid up, but you'll have to figure that one out yourself. Whenever you're satisfied that I've sent in the $7.50, you can send the book to : Larry Boydston, 20220
West 199th.st. Spring hill, KS. 66083. Hell ! There is bound to be shipping charges. Tell you what. Find out how much it costs to ship at reasonable cost and let me know.
we'll figure it out then. I'm the one who would like the book, and a new one(which I don't really need) I'm sure runs near $100.00. If you get me the shipping price and an address, I'll send it to you, and I'll make the $7.50 donation before you have to turn loose the book. Let me know if you feel this is a fair proposal. tonequester out.

[tonequester]

Concerning the value of Hamfests

It should be easy to find an ARRL Radio Amateurs Handbook. In fact I will go look. Wait here...

Yep, ARRL sells them themselves: ARRL :: What's New

But that is just the 2012 edition, which would be fine, but it includes very little about tubes anymore

If you found an old one from 1957 or 1962 or whatever, there would be mostly tubes. The basics are in there too, and current and voltage and resistance are timeless.

Amazon.com lists it. And like most books there, they also give access to places selling them used. I see used ones there for $20. But that was a 2011 version.

If you want to learn from it appropriately for tube amps, I recommend an older issue of it, and like Stan says, check with the loocal ham clubs or visit a ham fest. Might find an old one cheap or free.

ARRL activity is a lot stronger in the ham community than anything is in guitar amp land. so they have the ARRL as a central organization, we have nothing comparable. Here is a link to a find-it page for ham fests and conventions:
Hamfests and Conventions Calendar

tonequester here.

Thanks for the Hamfest info Enzo. It took some doing but I found out that there is a Hamfest, 11/10/12 at Raytown, Missouri near K.C. town. That's only a 40 minute drive for me, so barring the end of the world, I will be in attendance. Like you stated, they have their act together. I could tell how organized they are by stumbling around their web-site. Theu have a big conference in Dayton Ohio at the first of the year, to be followed by a national conference in California. As far as the handbook is concerned, I now have a line on getting a 1957 edition through this forum, for a small donation to the forum. I'ts well worth it based on the help I've received here from the very start. Thanks again, and have a great one ! tonequester.

[tonequester]

Hams n' history.

Find an old copy at a used book store, they were had good sections on tubes and building with tubes. Or check with the local ham club, they will probably give a copy away if someone shows an interest in what was once considered the most exciting hobby for children and adults in the 30s,40s and 50s.
After Sputnik was launched, the US was in shock, and unlike today, could at the time band together and change things. The 50s was a radical time of great change in the society with a sense of common purpose. For example the middle class was created, the highway system was built even before a lot of people figured out what to do with it, and the GI Bill of Rights transformed the country to a middle class dominated society. One of the sudden measures to get back the national pride lost to the Soviets was to make science and engineering a priority. Every high school in the country got a ham radio station with federal funds, mostly Hammerlund receivers and Johnson transmitters and Hygain antennas.
Science and math became a passion for millions of kids who were motivated by curiosity, instead of now, only by money, to discover something. Science fairs and competition because subjects for national media coverage. That sudden emphasis on science was the direct progenitor of the moon landing and Silicon Valley and all the innovation that helped the economy zoom past the rest of the world. Other countries are doing similar things that the US did back then to create a strong middle class so expect good things from them.

As a country we have been coasting on the growth of the 50s and 60s and no real income increases or market share of ideas since the 1970s. There is a direct link between kids being motivated by curiosity and action and the future well-being of a country. Ham radio was one of the important tools in that. I remember science clubs and radio clubs grew so large as after school activities that sometimes meetings needed to me moved to the basketball court to accommodate them.

Code was not hard but I did not learn it effectively for a long time, it delayed my getting a ham license until I was 10 years old. I did not know anybody who was a ham so did not have a way of taking the test anyway until I wandered far out of my neighborhood in the suburbs of Sacramento and spotted a old wooden wagon wheel on a porch as a decorative display of the address and 2 sets of call letters on it.W6EPG and K6TYJ. It took several trips back to get up my nerve to know on their door.
An old woman came to the door(I thought she was really old but probably in her 50s, I was 8). I asked if she was a ham and she opened the screen door while yelling to unseen people in the background "Johnny, here's another one" while motioning me inside and led me to an extention built onto the house that was radio club house adjoining a garage converted to workshop, lab. The radio room was full of people from 12 to 60 years old. Some were tuning on the radios, other's building things in the shop. Jonh E. Tayor was a electrician for the Southern Pacific RR and a ham since the 20s. He mentored dozens of young people and adults who in turned found others to mentor and I found out that this clubhouse was a Mecca for kids like me.
I was asked in a gruff cigar smoke puff covering his lips "what do you want and what is your name?" I said I wanted to be a ham. I had already read every book in the library on electricity and electronics but never had a chance to talk with people who knew about it or even how to pronounce the names of the parts I was building radios and amplifiers with. He replied, "go in there" and pointed to the workshop. Another adult was in there working on a tube short wave receiver and just picked up where Johnny left off, "what do you want, here, fix this" and handed me a meter with a broken knob. Soon I was teaching electronics to new arrivals, often 4 times my age, now that I knew even how to pronounce the names of parts and theory.
I was in heaven, a real oscilloscope, a bunch of old test gear, a drill press, metal shear, and brake, piles of sheet steel and aluminium, and hundreds of wooden cigar boxes full of parts that were all carefully labeled, everything to make electronic projects.

I had tried learning the code alone but Johnny's second hobby was old organs and had a large 3 rank Wurlitzer in the living room. He used the organ for weekend recitals by a house mate he adopted, another old ham who had fallen on hard times. Also named John, the guy was a whiz on the organ and played professionally in theaters and ball parks since the twenties. He got a gig playing at a large hotel ballroom through Jonnny's efforts so was feeling pretty good about his future. He was assigned to test my code on the organ and found I had some weak spots but basically knew the letters.
Over a month or two of after school training to listen to code as a musical sound instead of dits and dahs to be counted, I was ready to take my test. I passed the code portion and the technical part of the exam was a breeze. I was 9 by the time I took the exam and anxious to get on the air. I was building yet another transmitter so I was ready.
It seemed like forever to get my license in the mail, in fact it never came, I waited everyday by the mail box waiting for the mailman. Each day he apologized for disappointing me again. finally, as summer was approaching and the annual vacation to our beach house would take me away for 6 weeks, after which I would be put on a train and sent up to the mountains where all my relatives lived, and spend another 6 weeks exploring the mountains, hiking fishing and just being wild in nature alone. That was the traditional summer vacation and I was very upset that my license was not here yet. One day the mailman gave me a phone number to call, it was our local congressman's office. I had my dad call, and he told them of my plight, by summer's end it would be a year in waiting.
My dad handed me a slip of paper about a week later and said it was mine. It was a call letter set, he said the congressman contacted the FCC and the license application had been misplaced so the congressman requested a full report and resolution of the situation in a week. That got them on it apparently because I got my actual license in the mail a few days later, a week before the departure for the ocean. By the time it arrived I had just turned 10 two days before. I raced to my bedroom lab and fired up my receiver and newest home made transmitter and coded out CQ, a call for conversation. Within a few minutes another kid, 12, answered from Montana. I stayed on the air all night and the next day until I feel asleep at the operating desk with the code key under my right hand. My second foreign ham to talk with by code was a student at the radio institute in Moscow which started my interest in learning about some of the exotic places I was hearing and talking with. We exchange post cards, confirming the contracts, called QSL cards. Sometime it took months to arrive. I had a good location for Europe and South Pacific islands so talked many times to Russia, Scandinavia, UK, Germany towards the east and tiny islands few people ever heard of in the Pacific, where I talked to Senator Goldwater, King Hussein of Jordan, the King of Thailand, and more interesting people and places. That started my interest in travel and why I ended up in 86 countries and now live in Russia.
I remember that about 1/2 my HS graduating class went on to become engineers or scientists. It was a different era and I can't remember anyone who said their vocation choice was related to money. No MBA candidates or Wall Street types, just excited kids wanting to discover something or design something great. What a change in society since then, an unfortunate change, but one we did to ourselves.

tonequester here.

Greetings km6xz. I thank you for the most informative post. I too can remember when many of the houses in town and out in 'the country' had the shortwave
antennae mounted to the roof or the side of the house. I had a neighbor who's antenna seemed to be growing like the surrounding trees. It got taller every year, and it's "branches" seemed to grow as well. I was not lucky in that I never had a member of my family or a close friend who could have introduced me to Ham. From your post, I missed out on quite an experience. There was not only the learning experience(electronics & communications ), but it sounds like there was a great deal of comradeship as well.
Enzo and I conversed a little about this recently. He pointed out the strong organization and affiliation that the ARRL still maintains today, although ham is not so nearly popular
as it once was. It's a shame, because mindless hand held video games, cell phones that play games, and the various game systems out there for computer and home theater,
today's child is missing out on a lot of good experiences while they mindlessly wear their thumb joints out, over-stimulate certain parts of their brains, and ocassionally walk out
in front of an oncoming car, oblivious. If I would have had the opportunity to get involved as you did, am sure that I would have. I would now be a lot farther down the road
toward the educational goals I have set for myself, and would possibly be a more socially rounded persion as well. When you said it was a different ERA back then, I'm tempted to claim understatement. I miss those days, and I guess that this applies to each succeeding generation. Now, I know why my dad used to just shake his head when he would
see a youngster with shoulder length hair, walking down the road barefoot, thumbing a ride. I find myself shaking my head more end more. Thanks again for giving me an idea on what the Ham experience was like, and for the advice that you have given me. I have already found a Hamfest in my area to check out, and on this very forum I have the opportunity to get my hands on a 1957 ARRL Handbook, for a small donation to the forum. I can't think of a better donation to make when I think of the time folks like you, Enzo, Steve Conner, Austin, Chuck H, big---teee, loudthud, and all the rest have spent trying to help me out. I hope things are very well for you and yours in St. Petersburg.

Quote : "Freedom is not enough". Lyndon Baines Johnson.