Grayson in Turkey alerted us to Mike’s homebrew rigs:
Bill, Pete:
I had to pass along photos of the latest work of Mike Bohn, KG7TR. Mike is a long time thermatron home brewer, having built several SSB receivers and transmitters. He is famous for his “octal mania” designs that only use octal tubes. His present SSB transceiver is no exception. Some of his work is shown in my HSD book.
This is SERIOUS homebrewing, a work of art. According to Mike he spent “six months of pretty much full time work (6-7 hours per day, 6-7 days a week) to get the radio to the state shown in the pictures. Probably 750 to 1,000 hours. I retired in January and this was one of my bucket list projects.”
This is way more time than most of us who still work ever hope to devote to a homebrew project, but it gives me hope. Someday we will hopefully retire.
This is a 80,40,20 meter rig with a pair of 6146’s on the output. Tuned the good old fashion way with 5-5.5 Mc L/C colitis oscillator. It does have an IC freq counter as the frequency display.
Even though the metal work looks like it was done in a well equipped machine shop, Mike says “The sheet metal work was pretty onerous. I don’t have the tools to shear metal or make right angle bends, so everything had to be done with a jig saw, angle stock and files.” This also give me hope, but I have a hard time believing he doesn’t have a numerically controlled, laser mill!
Thought you would like to see some super nice work. Certainly “raises the bar”
73
Grayson
TA2ZGE – Ankara, Turkey
KJ7UM
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Pete’s STUNNED reaction:
Hi Bill,
Thanks –you have ruined my day –almost wants me to take all my radios to the scrap heap. Those are not radios but works of art. Lots of man hours in those projects and more amazing is finding many of the parts – the thermatrons are easy to find –it’s the other stuff that is nearly unobtanium.
Pete
Much More Here: http://qrz.com/db/KG7TR
I’d like to try a thermatron based radio but lack of experience and confidence in getting anything working at the end stops me. I’ve seen a few blogs, but they miss the steps out that I think are key. As for homebuilding – my mentor used to say the end-project is a ‘side-effect’ what you learn on the way is more important.
Beautiful craftsmanship!!
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