"fazamy" ) writes:
If you have ever operated cw on the Heathkit Sixer, I would like to
hear about your experiences. How was the reception? Were any
modifications necessary? I understand that you can plug in a key into
the metering jack, according to the manual. I recently bought an E-bay
rig, but I haven't put it on the air yet because I am awaiting parts to
assemble a power cord. How much cw activity is there on 6M? Etc.

The common method to put them on CW was to key an audio oscillator,
and feed that into the mic jack. It required no modifications to
the rig, and could be received in the other common transceivers of
the time. Those low end units did not have BFOs, and some, including
the Sixer, had superregenerative receivers, which wouldn't work
with CW either. But modulated the transmitter with a key'd oscillator
meant that such receivers could receive the code.

If you want to work CW with them, then you'll have to have
a separate receiver. There were modifications at the time of all
kinds for this. Some would add an antenna jack to the antenna relay
(or was it done with a manual switch?), so you could connect an
external receiver. Some would add converters to the units, again
to be used with an external receiver. I seem to recall reading one
article where they converted the superregenerative receiver into
a converter, to be used with that external receiver.

There would have been articles about adding CW to the units back
then. But, the transmitters were pretty simple, an oscillator
running at 50MHz and an amplifier stage, that likely doesn't work
so great when keyed. Likely lots of whooping. I think the A's
changed the circuitry to a lower frequency oscillator feeding
multipliers (unless that only applied to the A model of the Twoer),
but since they never got real complicated, again keying likely
has its faults.

Forty years ago, the low end transcievers for the VHF bands weren't
particularly good for CW (beyond their lack of key jacks), and not
something you'd try for anything much beyond local CW contacts if
then. They were useful because they populated the bands, and
especially on six metres, when the band opened up you could actually
DX with such simple and low power rigs, using AM. Don't forget
that back then, the US Novice license allowed operation on 2metres,
and up to a certian point, even phone operation there, so that
had a certain appeal.

But nobody who was serious would use such rigs. They'd get
a converter for their good HF receiver, and then build a transmitter
that started with a crystal in the 6 or 8MHz range, and then multiply
up. Neither the converter nor the transmitter were really major
construction projects.

Michael VE2BVW