A Crummy Commercial

I saw a picture of a 1950s station on Faze that had a Hammarlund receiver similar to this: source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/136778372006 and a Johnson Viking transmitter similar to this: 11 meters ? source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/297845200608 And I thought of this: Jack Sprat could eat no fat,  his wife could eat no lean;  and so between the two of them,  they licked the platter clean Isn't it strange that some of the radio companies were kinda like that?  Hammarlund made receivers almost exclusively.  EF Johnson made transmitters almost exclusively.  Certainly Collins, Hallicrafters and the rest felt free to sell both receivers and transmitters. I wonder why at least those two decided to "Jack Sprat" it ? Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

With the second game today (Saturday December 20, 2025) I just had to feature this: https://twitter.com/glennfischbach/status/2001109901649584352 In case the tune isn't familiar there are lyrics: https://genius.com/Happy-schnapps-combo-the-bears-still-suck-lyrics Many vocal versions can be found on Youtube and other sites.  And there is apparel which voices the sentiment: source:  https://cheesehead-tv-shop.fourthwall.com/collections/all/1 Not a classy tune even when given the classical treatment but polkas are always fun ! And I didn't know this term before so following the Packers IS educational: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amuse-bouche Also there is this somewhat more sedate song: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY1g_b-5RWA This lecture by Mike Leckrone, the former leader of the UW Madison marching band, had a Packers-Bears story in it at about 14:25 .source:  https://youtu.be/ai_iKr9RMO8?t=863    Donna Shalala wiki (the Bears aren't mentioned...

I remembered that my 8th grade English teacher, Miss McGrath, would read aloud to us from the book: H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N .  So I did a little searching and found out that Leo Rosten (pen name: Leonard Q. Ross) started publishing the Kaplan stories in the New Yorker Magazine. I fired up my copy of The Complete New Yorker and quickly found the Rosten stories:    In a way they are perfect as separate short stories since the 1930s were a different time with plenty of unfortunate stereotypes and language usage.  So a little taste goes a long way. But I also saw this ad (the New Yorker used to be able to sell a LOT more ads than they do today): Interesting in that this was a compact set made to run from 6 volts and probably included either an RF stage or an extra IF amp to boost the gain.  Plugging the price into the inflation calculator: Wow, that is a LOT of money today and considering that the Depression was still an ongoing thing, yikes, I wonder how it sold ?...

This seems interesting: source:  https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-salt-spoon-and-cup But the price: source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/306611168384 The only electric spoon I own: slide the black switch and press the red button and a red LED would light up the clear spoon has lost the ability to light up :(  It was a Kellogg's premium.  I never figured out how to get at the battery. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

Saw this: Immediately wondered about the semi-obligatory inflated price: And because it is almost 2026, I am thinking of raising my postage charge on kit orders to $6 per order from the present $5, as someone would have said in the 1960s: "rats" Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

Continuing from yesterdays blog: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/12/short-circuits.html   Here is a simple, fun, discrete component AM Morse Code Transmitter from the Short Circuits volume 1, page 30: The circuit shows .1 uF audio timing caps for the flip flop but I changed them to .22 uF which  lowered the frequency to about 660 Hz: I can't remember where I got the ferrite antenna but it was the only one I had with 4 leads:      After hooking up the last transistor I got these waveforms at about 480 kHz: damped carrier about 6 div x .25 ms per div = 1.5 ms period or about 670 Hz damped carrier, 4.2 divisions x 500 us per division = 2.1 us period or about 476 kHz The bell shaped decay - is this similar to how a spark waveform would have looked ?  Anyway a functional simple circuit, worth trying but it needs work.  It is lower in frequency due to the scope probe capacitance as well as the solderless breadboard capacitance. The Short Circuits volume 1 c...

I saw these Jaycar (an Australian electronics seller) electronics books for beginners mentioned on the GQRP list (page down to the bottom): https://www.jaycar.com.au/short-circuits The idea is relatively simple and fun circuits that are easy to construct and understand.  The first volume has discrete circuits assembled on a solderless setup.  The later books have solder projects with circuit boards and parts kits sold by Jaycar.  For example this FM radio caught my eye: But then I looked for the TDA7000 and found that while it could be found on Ebay it is discontinued.  The prices on the TDA7000 chips that are available are high, probably would be cheaper to just get an old FM radio that used the TDA7000 ?  Here is a really interesting blog post on the TDA7000: https://www.righto.com/2025/08/reverse-engineering-analog-TDA7000.html BTW the blogger, Ken Shirriff, is one of the cast of the Curious Marc videos on Youtube !  Here is his traced out schematic for ...

It didn't really turn out that well: I still had 4 quarts of canned maple sap that I never drank (was going to use it for iced tea or lemonade or ?) so the decision was made to do a final boil to maple syrup.  Except that I forgot to measure the sugar concentration before starting.  So I stopped too early and got maybe twice the volume (7 oz) that I should have. It's sweet and will work OK to sweeten coffee or tea but a little too watery for pancakes. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm 

I do try to do computer backups on Saturday, mainly of this blog.  Today after the backup I checked and found this: Quite a gap from October 11 to December 13.  What am I doing wrong ?  I'm not sure.  But today I was signed into Archive, hopefully that will help.  I clicked the link at the bottom of the weekly listing of blog posts and then backed that weeks worth of blogs up.  In that way I was able to save all the posts in the gap (I think).  Luckily I have a pretty high threshold for boredom - it was 9 weeks worth of blogs. So a backup is worthless unless verified, especially with a somewhat slap-happy entity like archive :( update 2025-12-14: signing in didn't help, the Wayback dumped my backup attempt yesterday:    I will try a nastygram or maybe turn off the VPN ? Weird ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

I used to live/work in Northlake IL.  Recently I took a "drive" around Northlake using Google.  It's been over 30 years since I've physically been in Northlake so allow me a little curiosity :)  As far as I know the town was named Northlake because two main arterial roads, Lake Street and North Avenue cross at the western boundary of Cook County / Northlake - in other words a very practical place not fancy.  Suburb names in Chicagoland could be weird though, there is one called Oakbrook which had a big mall / shopping center, and then next to it is Oakbrook Terrace, maybe not quite as upscale but again, practical :) I actually had been looking for a building to the east on North Avenue that had an old Zenith plant: next suburb east of Northlake is Melrose Park, IL They made picture tubes there but of course picture tubes and Zenith have not prospered over the last 30 years.  One of the engineers at GTE used to work at this Zenith Rauland plant.  He said the...

I found this Ameco HP-300T during my eternal search: Here is the packaging: And the instructions: I have no recollection of buying this - must have been a tail-end addition to get to a minimum order amount ? I was thinking of maybe looking at it with the NanoVNA but then would need baluns and also possibly attenuators and became mentally exhausted !  :) I wonder if anyone ever needs these anymore ?  I remember the evening cries at my house when I was in high school:  "TVI - TVI !"   In other words, time to pull the switch, Chuck.  I don't know why I didn't have one of these Ameco or equivalent filters.  TVI always depended on the channel being viewed and the band being transmitted on.  But reading the instructions above, maybe the problem was harmonics from the HW-16 ?  A filter like this wouldn't have helped.  In a way I miss those days. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm