{"id":596,"date":"2013-03-09T12:49:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-09T01:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2013\/03\/09\/richards-rip-van-winkle-barbados-rig\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T13:23:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T03:23:30","slug":"richards-rip-van-winkle-barbados-rig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2013\/03\/09\/richards-rip-van-winkle-barbados-rig\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard’s Rip-Van-Winkle Barbados Rig"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dear Bill,<\/p>\n

Thank you for taking a few minutes to read my email. I recently found your blog and enjoyed reading the entries. However, the most interesting and exciting article I discovered was your “Homebrew Radios in the Age of the Internet.” The article reminded me of a project started 30 years ago this month and placed in a box in the attic to wait until I could return to it.
Thirty years of health care management work filled the interim.<\/p>\n

The project is the 8P6 Hamcation rig by W1FB from QST of June and November 1982!<\/p>\n

I searched through the cob webs in the attic and found that all the boards are completed and I even fabricated a case. The original QST’s were there too! In response to a (somewhat strong) suggestion from my wife to “get a winter project going”, the rig is back on my retirement work bench. Wahoo.<\/p>\n

Progress to date has been instructive and fun. The boards are all cleaned, checked, and 95% wired together in the case and working. I attached 2 photo for your pleasure because you wrote specifically about the receiver in some blog posts.<\/p>\n

This is where I am scratching my head. As you say in the article, “receivers are tough”. I am confused and a bit frustrated about the correct procedure and sequence to correctly align the Barebones superhet. I can already hear stations and the noise level is acceptable. But I am not quite sure how to proceed in peaking up the receiver (hit a plateau?) Any suggestions for a newly retired ham now with the time to get back to the bench?<\/p>\n

Thank you very much for your kind comments and interest in my project.<\/p>\n

73’s
Richard
WB2PEF
Cherry Valley NY<\/strong> <\/p>\n

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Wow, what a cool resurrection project! I recognize both the receiver and transmitter boards. The RX is clearly DeMaw’s Barebones Superhet on a FAR Circuit board. I am listening to one of those AS I TYPE. Mine was put together by Dale, W4OP, and currently inhales on 17 meters. The TX board is what became known as the VXO 6 Watter. It was (I think) designed by W1VD, and appears in the ARRL book “QRP Classics.” This was my first really successful homebrew rig — I built that transmitter in the Dominican Republic in 1993. I still have most of the board, and the 20 meter Barebones RX that I used with it. Richard’s message makes me want to put this old gear back on the air. <\/strong>
<\/strong>
I hope Richard will send us an update on his Barbados revival project. <\/strong>
<\/strong>
I’m sure Doug DeMaw would be very pleased to know that his projects are still providing radio amateurs with a lot of fun and inspiration.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Our book: “SolderSmoke — Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics” http:\/\/soldersmoke.com\/book.htm<\/a> Our coffee mugs, T-Shirts, bumper stickers: http:\/\/www.cafepress.com\/SolderSmoke<\/a> Our Book Store: http:\/\/astore.amazon.com\/contracross-20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Bill, Thank you for taking a few minutes to read my email. I recently found your blog and enjoyed reading the entries. However, the most interesting and exciting article I discovered was your “Homebrew Radios in the Age of the Internet.” The article reminded me of a project started 30 years ago this month … Continue reading “Richard’s Rip-Van-Winkle Barbados Rig”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[199,7,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-barbados","category-demaw-doug","category-dominican-republic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":599,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions\/599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}