{"id":1247,"date":"2019-11-21T13:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T19:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/?p=1247"},"modified":"2026-02-20T14:25:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T20:25:16","slug":"tbt-childhood-amateur-radio-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/2019\/11\/21\/tbt-childhood-amateur-radio-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"[tbt] childhood amateur radio projects"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:256,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/technologists.com\\\/photos\\\/1960s\\\/fullsize\\\/1960CHS6Mconverter.jpg&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20251101075806\\\/https:\\\/\\\/technologists.com\\\/photos\\\/1960s\\\/fullsize\\\/1960CHS6Mconverter.jpg&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-03 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01:09:12&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-25 22:04:11&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-12-29 19:47:52&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-14 09:46:34&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-19 08:42:33&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-04 21:43:37&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-15 21:22:32&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-20 20:23:50&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 10:52:23&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-13 09:43:04&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-20 01:17:44&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-27 13:09:21&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 09:10:54&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 09:10:54&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/technologists.com\/photos\/1960s\/fullsize\/1960CHS6Mconverter.jpg\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/technologists.com\/photos\/1960s\/fullsize\/1960CHS6Mconverter.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"338\" alt=\"6M converter\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As part of redecorating our house and trying to organize my chaotic archives, I stumbled across a paper copy of <em>The Radio Handbook<\/em> (William Orr, Editor) 17<sup>th<\/sup> Edition. While in junior high school I built several projects out of The Handbook, probably the 16<sup>th<\/sup> Edition. [This paper copy is dated 1967, so too recent. <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/The_Radio_Handbook_William_Orr_Editor_15th_Edition_1959\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The Radio Handbook<\/em> (William Orr, Editor) 15<sup>th<\/sup> Edition 1959<\/a> doesn&#8217;t seem to have my projects, but I haven&#8217;t obtained 16<sup>th<\/sup> edition PDF.]<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>My favorite, and most heavily used, was a 6M (50MHz) to 40M (7MHz) converter. Typical receivers only went up to 30MHz. I wasn&#8217;t good at Morse Code so I only had a &#8220;Technician&#8217;s&#8221; class license that allowed voice at 6M and above. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.americanradiohistory.com\/Archive-Handbooks\/Radio-Handbook-17-1967.pdf#page=560\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">A Nuvistor Converter for Six Meters<\/a> seems like the reference I used, but I modified in a number of regards.<\/p>\n<p>It would be out of sight, but in use, at my station a few years later:<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/technologists.com\/photos\/1960s\/fullsize\/Bootsonhamequipment.jpg\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/technologists.com\/photos\/1960s\/fullsize\/Bootsonhamequipment.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"303\" alt=\"Boots on Knight Kit R100-A\" class=\"aligncenter size-thumbnail\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>(I originally had a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=V-F_Fz2G7BI&#038;t=285s\" target=\"_blank\">HeathKit<\/a> AR-3. I think I chose to convert to 7MHz instead of the book&#8217;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.)<\/p>\n<p>I also built a 40M transmitter for a science fair project, but didn&#8217;t use it much. I think I tried to build my own 6M transmitter but never got it to work. I don&#8217;t see either of those in the 15th or 17th editions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hardware"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8c9uP-k7","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2794,"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions\/2794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/notes.technologists.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}