[tbt] childhood amateur radio projects
As part of redecorating our house and trying to organize my chaotic archives, I stumbled across a paper copy of The Radio Handbook (William Orr, Editor) 17th Edition. While in junior high school I built several projects out of The Handbook, probably the 16th Edition. [This paper copy is dated 1967, so too recent. The Radio Handbook (William Orr, Editor) 15th Edition 1959 doesn’t seem to have my projects, but I haven’t obtained 16th edition PDF.]
My favorite, and most heavily used, was a 6M (50MHz) to 40M (7MHz) converter. Typical receivers only went up to 30MHz. I wasn’t good at Morse Code so I only had a “Technician’s” class license that allowed voice at 6M and above.
A Nuvistor Converter for Six Meters seems like the reference I used, but I modified in a number of regards.
It would be out of sight, but in use, at my station a few years later:
(I originally had a HeathKit AR-3. I think I chose to convert to 7MHz instead of the book’s 14MHz because the AR-3 worked better at 40M. I used the KnightKit T-60 transmitter and later acquired the KnightKit R100-A that Boots is resting on.)
I also built a 40M transmitter for a science fair project, but didn’t use it much. I think I tried to build my own 6M transmitter but never got it to work. I don’t see either of those in the 15th or 17th editions.