Some of my earliest ham radio memories were of a group of hams in the Newport Amateur Radio Society who would spend their Saturdays at the electronic surplus stores of the San Fernando Valley in Southern California. In the 1970s there was a lot of military surplus electronic gear that could be purchased by the pound if you were willing to haul it away. I remember these hams stripping this gear down for its modules, relays, panel displays and switches that would cost a king’s fortune if purchased from an electronic store. These homebrew projects were not only functional but beautiful to look at in their custom cabinets and rack panels.
I remember Leroy, W6SYC, had a four channel Motorola tube station in a Motorola “J” cabinet where he controlled the channels with a touch-tone pad inside the cabinet next to a Western Electric 247B DTMF decoder chassis. This was his primary two meter base station and it was beautiful to look at and of course it sounded great on the air.
These are the memories that stirred in me during my conversation with Jim Veatch, WA2EUJ, who is my guest this week on the QSO Today Podcast. Jim is a homebrewer who uses what he has on hand, often from surplus gear, to build his projects. As a three time winner of the ARRL Homebrew Challenge, Jim’s solutions are not only clever, but the end products are beautiful in form and design. I hear some of ham radio’s leaders lament the loss of the homebrewing art. They may be right in terms of the homebrew single tube Novice rigs that everyone started with 60 years ago; however, it seems that homebrewing has morphed with the times as the World War Two surplus parts are less available. Electronic parts and kit companies are proliferating on the Internet with no shortage of low cost opportunities to obtain parts to build almost anything. These are very exciting times to be a homebrewer as you will hear on my QSO Today with Jim.
I remember Leroy, W6SYC, had a four channel Motorola tube station in a Motorola “J” cabinet where he controlled the channels with a touch-tone pad inside the cabinet next to a Western Electric 247B DTMF decoder chassis. This was his primary two meter base station and it was beautiful to look at and of course it sounded great on the air.
These are the memories that stirred in me during my conversation with Jim Veatch, WA2EUJ, who is my guest this week on the QSO Today Podcast. Jim is a homebrewer who uses what he has on hand, often from surplus gear, to build his projects. As a three time winner of the ARRL Homebrew Challenge, Jim’s solutions are not only clever, but the end products are beautiful in form and design. I hear some of ham radio’s leaders lament the loss of the homebrewing art. They may be right in terms of the homebrew single tube Novice rigs that everyone started with 60 years ago; however, it seems that homebrewing has morphed with the times as the World War Two surplus parts are less available. Electronic parts and kit companies are proliferating on the Internet with no shortage of low cost opportunities to obtain parts to build almost anything. These are very exciting times to be a homebrewer as you will hear on my QSO Today with Jim.
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