Vintage military and amateur receivers and transmitters

I'm Steve, G7HEP and the Vice-Chairman of the Club.
My chief interests are construction, and the restoration of vintage military and amateur receivers and transmitters.

My first "proper" receiver was an RCA AR88, followed by assortment of Murphy B40s, R 1155s and others, all of which I've restored to good working order, and some of which I've sold, usually to make room for something more interesting - there's only so much the shack will hold and still allow me inside.

The Station

The shack itself, which also doubles as my workshop, is heated to maintain a minimum of 15 degrees Celsius throughout the coldest weather, and condensation is never a problem.

The main HF aerial is a 120' doublet at about 20 to 30 feet high, and anything but straight: it seems to work though. For all bands 80M to 10M it's driven from an Icom 735 through a homebrew single coil Z-match and 300 ohm balanced twin feeder. For Top Band, I use just half of the doublet / feeder as an inverted L, driven through a simple L/C matching unit against earth.

For VHF and UHF there are various aerials about the site, including a Diamond WX1 vertical (for 6M, 2M and 70cm), a 7-element ZL Special for 2M ssb (the one with the 300 ohm ribbon phasing line that the Gulls keep breaking), a 3-element homebrew Yagi for 6M ssb, and a long Yagi for 23cm. A simple dipole serves for the local 4M chat channel, horizontally polarised to avoid the packet racket. Now that a few of the locals have acquired more modern synthesised 4M rigs (like Philips PRM-80) instead of the old rock-bound Pye Westminsters and Cleartones, I've also built a 4M J-pole which seems to work OK.

Apart from the Icom 735 and the PRM-80, there's a selection of more (almost) modern equipment to cover other bands plus a (G1JRU homebrew) transverter for 23cm. My Icom IC 202E, which got me a 78th in the 2004 PW 2M Low Power contest out of not too many more gets used portable. If more output is needed on 2M ssb, there's a homebrew valve (QQV06-40) PA - 50mW input for 90W output - and various other solid state PAs including a Tokyo Hi-Power HL50B, which works well portable with a FT 817.

Restorations

On Top Band of a Sunday morning, (1964 kHz, 09:00 onwards) I use a Codar AT5 on a.m.
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I bought this rig last year at the Andover (Wildhern) rally, complete with its power supply, after looking for one for several months. Apart from some tidying, a meter replacement and needing new coaxial connectors, the AT5 was in very good condition, and gives about 7W of nicely rounded a.m. on a good day. Incidentally, it uses choke modulation, and if by some mishap the modulation choke dies, provided you have the Codar Power supply, you have a direct replacement component in the HT choke - you can then use (almost) any old HT smoothing choke in the PSU.

For receive on Top Band I have several choices: the regular is the HRO, restored about 5 years ago (I use the '735 if anyone wants a signal report) or a Canadian Marconi 52 set,
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or a Soviet R 311 (amazing sensitivity and a very fine tuning rate).
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The R 311's manual is all in Russian, and I'm in the process of attempting a sort of translation - but as it was 35 years ago that I last studied the language, this may take some time........I just hope it stays working in the meantime.

There's also an R 1155A, used with an external PSU and audio output stage,
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and in the more modern section, a Larkspur R 210, again with external mains PSU (I couldn't stand the noise of the vibrator pack on 24 volts DC).
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The latest hernia-inducing lump is a Racal RA 117EM
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as used by the Navy with teleprinters, although I've no plans to get into those: I leave that to Andrew G0AMS, whose spiel is elsewhere on this Website. As of now this receiver doesn't work, and at 66 lbs. (about 30 Kg in new money), just getting it onto the bench requires a certain determination and a good breakfast.

Naturally all this vintage gear requires a fair bit of test gear to get it working and into line, and here I have a Marconi TF 801D HF/VHF signal generator - massive by any standards, but up to now reliable, also an old Advance (grey case, nice vernier dial) HF generator. There's a 'scope too, but that's (relatively) modern - I sold the Tektronix 545 a few years ago (54 valves and a right useful shack-warmer), plus a Bradley multimeter and homebrew wobbulator. What I'll do when I find someone's been playing with the RA 117's band pass filters I don't know - but there's at least one club member with a spectrum analyser.

Unfortunately, I still have to work for a living which involves a fair amount of overseas travel, and I'm never in the shack when the good openings occur. I do get to listen a fair bit though, and the Sony SW 100 is always with me on my travels - although the QRM in modern hotels doesn't help. Apart from the vintage receivers and the Icom 735, when I'm at home thereżs a choice of either Drake R8E (amazing filters, but not everyone's cup of tea ergonomically, and inclined to overheat because of the cheap mains transformer - best run on 13.8v external supply) or Icom R 75, also very competent, but not so fully featured.

Useful Resources

Chris Parry (G8JFJ) is publishing an electronic book which is an invaluable reference source for the Restoration of Valved HF Communications Receivers. It is only available via the internet and is therefore accessible free of charge to all.

The book is under constant revision by Chris: in later forms it will appear with photographs of the equipment concerned.

Habits

If I'm around, I'll be listening on 4M f.m., and regularly contribute to the weekly insanity which is the F&DARC Tuesday evening 2M net (145.475 MHz or thereabouts from 8p.m. UK time). On HF I like Top Band and 17M (nice and quiet, free of contesters). I like to listen - and occasionally contribute to - the VMARS week-end nets, but I don't wear either camouflage military clothing or drive olive drab hand-painted vehicles: there's no known cure for that!

Steve G7HEP