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- Web site created December, 2012, a few days after the end of the Mayan Calendar. We're still here so I figured I had better rebuild my web site! read more...
- Club Bulletins added
Welcome to the NE6I Web Site
This first picture is me in 1972, building my first rig, a Heathkit HW-16. I'm building it on our pool table in the family room. My dad must have been crazy to let me build it there! Sheesh! See that lamp? I built that in high school wood shop. Even in wood shop, electrons were in my blood.
This next picture is my grandfather and I
troubleshooting that darn thing. The receiver was fine
but the transmitter output was less than Part 15 allows.
In other words, a few milliwatts. If that! It took me
months to figure it out, and only with the help of an
Elmer in the Los Angeles area who corresponded back and
forth with me via snail mail (there was no internet at
the time). I was too green to figure it out myself. It
turned out to be an open screen grid choke on the final
amplifier tube. I'd put it too close to the chassis and
it had shorted out upon initial turn on. Argh! While
waiting to figure it out, I got anxious to get on the
air and built a one tube (50C5 audio tube!) transmitter
on a piece of wood from an article in Electronics
Illustrated, March, 1968. It put out 15 watts and
provided me endless joy. The article instructed us
builders to wind the antenna coupling coils on plastic
pill bottles. My grandfather provided me with these
(empty prescription bottles). I think deep down, he
wanted to be a ham too. :) The so-called Bare Essentials
Transmitter article is sort of recreated at this web site.
Here I am enjoying my very first RTTY contest, the Tara
Melee, December 7, 2013.
This is my station in the early 1980s. A mean machine hi
hi. A Heathkit HW-101 and SB-220. The amp was purchased
used from local DXer W6CRE (SK). An Alliance HD73
rotator controller is also visible. Note the DXCC award
on the wall.
And this is my first yagi, a Wilson 3 element tribander
at about 35 feet up. A healthy step up from my previous
inverted vees. There is a 40m inv vee attached below it
that is just barely visible here.
Later I added a KLM 3 element 40 meter yagi, back when such antennas were not commonplace. Sure made 40 meters fun!
The Wilson tribander was replaced with a Hygain TH6DXX soon after.
- Licensed 40+ years
- Active DXer
- Former President and current webmaster of SCCC