Ham radio was a hobby which is now almost gone. The crux of the hobby was to sit and talk with someone, across town , down the state or across the world, via radio waves.
Multi Elmac was a company that made electronic stuff in the 50's. The were big manufacturers of garage door radio transmitters and receivers. The unit went in the trunk and had a few tubes that would transmit about 100 ft if you were lucky.
Lots of hams had other transmitters that were made by companies like EICO, Heathkit, EF Johnson actually made a kit form of their famous Viking line of transmitters. Then there were the really high priced units that rich guys had, brands like Collins and Hammerlund.
I had a Multi Elmac AF67. I got it used for 25 bucks, and made a power supply for it from old TV power supply transformer parts. 600 volts DC at about 125 milliamps, equated to about 65-70 watts of power......
The unit was a universal unit which also could be mounted in a vehicle. Image the angst my mother had when I tried to mount that thing in our family station wagon?
The antenna looked like a 8 ft broom stick attached to the bumper.
Thanks Mom, she did, I probably wouldn't have allowed my son to do that, but then again I never had any kids......maybe a good thing.
Anyway, the transmitter used tubes, about 10 of them. It also had a VFO, that allow you to dial in any transmit frequency you wanted to use.
Now a days the whole unit, transmitter and receiver, no tubes is the size of a cigar box........
You do remember cigar boxes don't' you?
Red Dot & Prince Edward.. those were the boxes I got from Dad. Still have 1 R/D panatela box; when I wanna commune with Dad, I hold that old box. My first xmtr was built on a tapered-side bread pan - I thought it was very cool, as you could "easily view the meter with no parallax", and as the sports-car magazines used to say "the controls fell readily to hand". It was a 6AG7 and a 5Y3, with a coil, wound from the scavenged wire from a discarded transformer, found in the neigbor's trash (do you have any idea how long it takes to unwind a transformer WITHOUT taking the laminations apart?) Mom gave me hell when she discovered what happened to her bread pan.
ReplyDeletetom - W0EAJ