Hobby Nostaglia -- Destress, be creative
Destress, relax, tease your creative side. What kind of new things can you learn, or try? Bet you have 3 - 5. I want to tour the S. Texas Nuclear Plant. But today, let's visit tube radio's.
Growing up in the early 60’s, TVs had tubes. And about every month or so I’d sit behind the TV by my dad. I held an empty shoe box. As my dad removed each tube from the TV, I carefully placed them in order of removal, so we could re-install them correctly.
Then we would drive down to 7-11, less than 3 miles away and test each of the 30 - 40 tubes for a 19” Color TV. Couple of minutes per, spend $15-20. Then go home, put the tubes back in and it worked, most times.
.By the way, that cabinet under the tester is full of tubes of every different kind. You hope they have the ones you will need.
This photograph shows the detail. On the back is a Roladex of different tube specification. Instruction tell you how to set the rotating knobs below that properly set up a socket specific for the tube type you want to test. Then you push the red button and read the dail — green is good.
If not, then look under the tester and find a new one — seems most were $3 and we would need 3-5 every other month or so.
High School science project: 2 tube transmitter.
As I recall, at the time you didn’t need a license if the transmitter was low power, 1W or so; today’s regulations as I saw limit the range to 200 feet irrespective of power.
It was a lot of fun, I still remember — I burned my leg soldering it all together; still have the scar.
If you are interested here are two paths:
Three different radio designs: one tube, two tubes and three tubes.
http://www.netzener.net/index.php/project-articles/10-one-tube-am-radio
Quoting from “One Tube AM Radio Article (link above), by The 60's and 70's were the golden age of electronic kit building. The novice had a great many educational kits to choose from that taught basic skills and electronics theory while assembling a device that could do something useful or entertaining. An advanced builder could use "sweat equity" to inexpensively obtain popular electronic products like HiFi stereo systems, color televisions, CB radios, and automotive test equipment.
Here is another guy offering tube radio designs: https://www.electronixandmore.com/projects/amxmitter/index.htm
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