In the April 1941 issue of Radio News, William D. Hayes, W6MNU, of Oakland, California, recounts that since he liked to build his own equipment and constantly improve as the state of the art progressed, he had amassed a large collection of perfectly good spare parts. To put them to use, he put together this transmitter-receiver. It was intended for portable use while vacationing, but could also be put to use as a backup rig from the home station.

The receiver employed a 27 tube as regenerative detector, with a 47 used for audio output to drive a speaker, mounted on the wooden front panel with a piece of window screen for protection. The receiver covered 70 through 550 meters in two bands. The author noted that tuning the broadcast band was a useful feature, since the set would be used on vacation. He reported that the simple receiver provided very good reception on the broadcast band.

A bandspread capacitor covered the 80 meter ham band perfectly.

The 80 meter transmitter was a crystal oscillator also using a 47 tube. The use of the same tube as used in the receiver was intentional, to minimize the number of spare tubes that had to be carried. With the type 80 rectifier tube, only three spare tubes had to be brought along.

The author reported that from his cabin in the Santa Cruz mountains of California, and with a 130 foot antenna only 10 feet off the ground, he made numerous contacts with California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Nevada.

Hilo residents fleeing tsunami. Wikipedia photo.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the April 1, 1946, Aleutian Islands earthquake and tsunami.  The quake had a magnitude of 8.6 and resulted in hundreds of casualties, including all five lighthouse keepers at the Scotch Cap Lighthouse on Unimak Island. 55 foot waves raced across the Pacific at 500 miles per hour and hit Hawaii 4.9 hours later. In Hilo, 173 were killed, including some who were swept out to sea by the receding waters. The destruction prompted the creation of the Seismic Sea Wave Warning System, the forerunner of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

As detailed in the August 1946 issue of QST, at Ikatan, Alaska, the quake was felt by amateur radio operator Henry W. Peterson, K7FFG, who reported four earthquakes followed by a tidal wave cresting at 60 feet. His home was washed into the bay and many other buildings were damaged. He reported families having to head for the hills until daybreak when they could see what was going on.

At 6:00 AM, he put out a call of QRR, but was unable to make contact until 10:00 AM, when he got in touch with government station KNLL. He also raised Signal Corps station WXFP, which requested that he keep a constant radio watch and report every 15 minutes for 24 hours. He then reported all shocks twice a day. There were a total of about 70 shocks up through April 7.

Local residents were very relieved to know that he was in contact with the Signal Corps and could get help at any time if needed.

Shown here from the March 1961 issue of the British magazine Radio Constructor is a set dubbed the “Ranger 3,” a pocket sized three-transistor receiver for the medium waves, including the 160 meter ham band and marine frequencies. The set employed a regenerative detector and had a built-in ferrite antenna. The basic set used an earphone, but as shown in the schematic, it could drive a speaker with a few additional parts.

As was often the case with this magazine, there was a construction article, and the ad for a parts supplier conveniently appeared in the same issue with all of the parts. In this case, Henry’s Radio Ltd. of London could supply all the required parts for just over 79 shillings.

The ad points out that the set should be able to pull in Radio Luxembourg in most areas, and the ad turns this into “Luxembourg Guaranteed (where normally receivable).” The BBC had a monopoly on broadcasting in Britain, and the English commercial program from Luxembourg was a popular alternative.

This simple set did a good job of pulling in the distant station because it was optimized for the station’s wavelength of 208 meters (1439 kHz). Since this was close to the top of the dial on most sets, the reception might be marginal, since they were probably optimized for the middle of the broadcast band. The Ranger 3, however, covered 600 kHz to 2.5 MHz, meaning that the Luxembourg station was right in the middle of the dial. In fact, the article suggested waiting until late at night to tweak the receiver, using Radio Luxembourg as the test signal.

According to the article, the set was a very good performer, pulling in numerous continental stations, especially at night.

The young man shown here has been drawing Social Security for a few years now, but in 1960, he was pulling in a broadcast station thanks to the two transistor receiver described in the Spring 1961 issue of Radio TV Experimenter.

The set was dubbed by the magazine as the “Little Cub,” and was described as an ideal project for boys, individually or in groups. The circuitry was mounted on the front panel, which was a printed circuit board. Half the fun of building the set was etching the circuit board using etchant liquid. According to the magazine, contact with clothing would cause it to be soiled with a brownish color, “but this solution is not dangerous in any form.”

The circuit board traces actually went on the front of the board, and additional decorations and dial markings were added, meaning that the lettering was all in copper.

After the circuit board was etched and rinsed, the glass baking pan in which it did its work was washed with soap and water and put away, and Mom was presumably none the wiser. Then, the two transistors and one diode and other components were soldered in place. The first stage, a 2N414A transistor, served as RF amplifier and used feedback to boost the signal. A 2N107 transistor was used as audio amplifier. The set also featured a phono input which could be hooked to a record player.

Fifty years ago, this Italian gentleman is expressing his approval at the loudspeaker volume coming from this one-tube medium wave set, described in the March 1961 issue of Radiopratica magazine.

The set used a single dual tube, an ECL86, known in America as a 6GW8. The tube was reflexed to get double duty out of the tube, allowing the use of a speaker with a relatively simple circuit. The set ran off line current, thanks to solid state rectifiers, and the detector is also a solid state diode.