K7JEB AM Log: 30 June 2006 - 15 July 2006

6/30/Fri

So-so condx on 40 for noontime 7293 AM roundtable. 
Ted, WA6TJN, touts chromium as dietary supplement and
I try to make a witty remark about not mistaking it
for hexavalent chromium and Erin Brockovich but it gets
lost in the selective fading.  AM can be a tough house 
to work comedy in.

7/1/Sat

Ken, K6CJA out in Hesperia, informs the 3855 roundtable that
he will not be able to make the Williams 'fest.  Max, K7CAX,
Martin, K7BDY, and others affirm their intentions to be
there, however. 

W5EOE, Shep in Delores, CO, promises some shack/rig pictures
for the Arizona-AM website "real soon now". 

Damon, W7MD, reports that his antenna crew came out and put
up his array of beams but found a bad rotator on one of the
towers.  Three steps forward and one back, I guess. 

This dinged-up-leg syndrome seems to be spreading -- first
Lock, W1ZD, with a bad ankle and now Max dings his knee
badly enough to keep him off work. 

Max also continues to have an intermittent in his Johnson
500 modulator filament circuitry. 

John, WA6JUS in San Diego, advises he is getting his
'bluegrass chops' back while working with a local group. 

14 participants on 3855 with a few seldom/never heard
stations -- W7WGB/6 near Sacramento, KC9GQ in Flag and WI7M,
Jim, in Kanab, the latter on with his HB single 6146 and RCA
AR-88 receiver. 


7/2/Sun

Shep, W5EOE, pounds into Arizona on 3855 with an ART-13
driving his fixed, 3-element, 75-meter beam pointed SW.  He
says it does a fine job in hooking VK-land DX as well.  He
is still in the balanced-line tuner business and will
custom-build a unit for someone if they will supply the
components.  Shep's T-195 transmitter has a major power
supply problem that shows up as an over-current situation on
the 28-volt primary power bus.  He needs advice and/or
schematics. 

7/4/Tues nite

W8QBG and I are the only 2M AM net participants.  George and I
have a nice, hour-long QSO about control-circuit 'ladders'
and programmable logic controllers (PLC's) as an outcome of
George continuing to work the sequencing and remote-control
design issues on his Bauer 707 transmitter.  George is
having to go at these problems head-on after discovering
that the 110-volt delay relay he was going to use had a
minimum delay of 6 seconds, much too long for even an ex-BC
xmtr to take to the air.

7/5/Wed

Tom, AE8O, puts his "new" Valiant on the air from New Mexico
on the 7293 noontime get-together.  It sounds very good, due
in no small part to Tom's TLC in recapping, bias-tweaking
and replacing the 866A unobtainium rectifiers with 3B28's.
And speaking of unobtainium, Tom is having difficulties
finding reasonably priced replacement 6146A's for the five
in the Valiant.  This leads to a discussion of substituting
6146B's for the 'A' version, the general agreement being
that it isn't a good idea.  However, with 6146's and 6146A's
being pretty much New Old Stock (NOS), the problems with
neutralization and biasing will eventually have to be worked
in boatanchors such as the Valiant. 

Also heard on 7293: W5VXE, Ted in Los Alamos, NM.  As usual,
bad short-skip conditions prevent AE8O from hearing W5VXE.
AE8O comments about the general decline in participation on
7293, due in part to the poor conditions at the bottom of
the sunspot cycle. 

A long day and lots of QRN from evening thunderstorms
causes me to fall asleep while listening to the AMI net on
3870.  I wake up an hour and a half into the proceedings,
decide not to check in, but note that NCS duties were
seamlessly handled by a number of stations, notably NI6Q
and WJ6W.

7/9/Sun

I return from the Williams Hamfest early this a.m. to avoid
traffic and in time to get on 3855.  I think I spent more on
touristy "Route 66" junk than I did on actual hamfest
"finds", although I did get a second Palomar LED bar-graph
wattmeter from Warren, K7SA, that made the trip worthwhile.
That peak-reading wattmeter is part of my "secret sauce" for
running AM out of the Kenwood 850 and I needed a spare. 

I think there is some kind of mojo going on with hamfests in
Arizona -- they seem to be rainmakers.  This hamfest brought
the monsoon into Williams and, lest we forget, the
Scottsdale 'fest provided the only rain for Phoenix in the
first half of 2006.  The new gravel on the rodeo grounds
parking lot proved its worth by preventing the hamfest from
turning into a mud bog. 

I did enjoy my side trip out to WA8ULG's QTH somewhere near
Parks, AZ.  Ted has the ideal setup for ham radio --
non-existent manmade noise, flat land and a low horizon.  I
was the only AMer at the open house, but veteran
moon-bouncer W7GBI (Charlie) indulged me a bit.  It seems
that Charlie listens-in to the AMI net on a very funky 1937
superhet full of grid-capped, Mae West bottles and
recognized my callsign. 

3855 stuff: George, W8QBG, is busy getting the Valiant he
purchased at Williams on the air.  How many projects does
George have under way now?  Damon, W7MD, reports electrical
work on towers on hold pending a blue-stake survey for
trench digging.  He also recounts getting thrown by having a
MARS crystal in the S-Line he was bringing up and (horrors!)
transmitting on some oddball frequency before realizing what
was happening.  AL0F, Tim in Arivaca, shows up on frequency
and back in Arizona after an Alaskan and Pacific-NW vacation
trip. 

7/11/Tues-nite 2M AM net 

More follow-up action from Williams: W1ZD reports that the
prescaler/timebase module he bought for $10 has restored his
HP counter to full functionality, giving him two counters
now and removing any off-frequency excuses.  Some
bittersweet discussion about Max, K7CAX, offering his
Valiant and 500 for sale at the 'fest.  It was great to hear
those rigs on the air regularly on the Phoenix AM
frequencies.  W8QBG reports that the remote control for the
Bauer 707 is complete and that the mods on his "new" Valiant
are in place.  Those consisted of installing plug-in
solid-state rectifiers for both HV and LV and removing the
B+ from the driver transformer - a perennial weak spot on
Valiants. 

7/15/Sat-morning 3855 

K7JEB taking care of sick friend and in receive-only,
portable-radio mode.... 

NA7RH, Bob over in Scottsdale, is downloading and
printing-out chapters from the RCA Radiotron Designers
Handbook.  Says he can't get enough of those trick
vacuum-tube circuits where clever engineers made one device
(one tube) do a number of functions simultaneously (this
from one of Moto's RF whizzzzrds). 

John, WA6JUS, mentions that they had a memorial service for
one of the antique-radio club members at his local church in
La Jolla that featured an on-site SX-28 for authentic tube
audio sound. 

Hear K7CAX on with an Icom 718 and amplifier - not bad,
actually, but still in mourning for the '500, Max. 

George has "white-light" experience with yet another one of
his home-brews, this time the one with a 450TL in the final.
No sound, but a brilliant white flash and blown HV fuses on
key-down, traced to a 100TH in the modulator.  George
bemoans the fact that 100TH's are becoming rare and his
stock is dwindling. 

W8QBG and NA7RH have this detailed discussion about getting
precisely the right shade of glossy
burnt-maroon/rotten-burgundy paint for the Valiant-case
repainting at some joint called Space-Age Paints where the
whole store reeks of acetone, toluene and other highly
flammable plasticizers.  Got 'er done, apparently. 


AM HONOR ROLL...
(stations logged this period) 


WA6TJN _____ W7MD _______ W8QBG ______ K0ETD 
W5EOE ______ K6CJA ______ K7CAX ______ K7BDY 
WA8ULG _____ W7WGB ______ WI7M _______ NA7RH 
WA6JUS _____ KC9GQ ______ WA7LYO _____ AA7MH 
AE8O _______ W5VXE ______ WB6EYS _____ W7CCC 
K7JWA ______ AL0F _______ AC7RO ______ W7GBI 
NI6Q _______ WJ6W _______