See below...

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007, NS7F wrote:

Hello all,
I have discovered how much fun tubes can be, and am in the process of
planning one or more transmitters to go along with my 2-tube
regenerative receiver. Now, I'm only 23 years old, so I'm in the
process of researching hollow state technology. Could you please put
together a short list of the "best" ARRL handbook editions? I have 99
and 05- I'm just looking for a few years to watch for on amazon, etc.
Of course, recommendations for other books would be appreciated, too,
but I'm on a tight budget...

Thank you very much in advance for your advice.

Ross, NS7F


I am 63, and retired, and am also having a ball building my own tube gear.

Generally, solid state began to take over all the low level circuitry
in the ARRL handbooks in the 1960s and particularly afterwards. There was
a blend (between tube and solid state) at some interval but I don't look
at the later handbooks at all any more. My handbooks are from early 1960s
and go back.

The "Radio Handbook" by Bill Orr, also has editions going back, annually
or almost annually, for a long time and has a different flavor but also
good, and alternative presentations including very nice schematics and
photos. The Radio Society of Great Britain (I think) also sponsored ham
radio handbooks but I think may also be geared to European tube types
which are different (at least to some degree) than US "valves" (as they
call them), but you might try to do some research on that.

You might want to think about the tube evolutions: the very early tubes
are harder to find and more expensive and particularly the tube sockets.

Around the 1940s we had mostly octal base (key plus 8 pins) and they are
easy to find from tube supliers, but many were metal (not good if you
like to see those filaments light up). If you like battery filament types
(1.4 v for single C cell, 2.0 v for lead-acid cells, and 2.8 v, for two C
cells in series) you have a small variety of nice 7 pin tubes (eg. 1T4,
1U4, etc), and a few 8 pin octal tubes (eg. 1A7, 1H4, etc). Prior tubes
had poorer specs and the sockets are hard to find. The so-called Loctal
tubes (very thin pins and special 'click in' keys)..you just about can't
find sockets for and they would be the hardest to build homemade sockets
for, and, they themselves are not easy to find, either (I think they were
mostly for car radios). Most of these tubes will run plate voltages on a
handful of 9 volt batteries you can get at Dollar Tree for two for a buck,
and you hook them in series with each other since the connectors are all
male-female and otherwise don't need much to hold them together if you
just lay them on the table and hook aligator clips to the terminal
negative and terminal positive. A lot of the earlier tubes have difficult
to find sockets (but Radio-Daze, in New York, has a lot of sockets).

Public libraries can be a resource but be aware that most smaller ones
"discard" their older holdings and replace them with newer versions. Your
best bet is to ask at the reference desk to find out how you can find
which library has the older editions. The _central_ or _main_ branch (in
your state) may be the only one that keeps older editions but you should
be able to arrange an inter-library loan where you can borrow the book
for, say, two weeks, and then if you like it, look for a copy on
Amazon.com or www.addall.com or www.bookfinder.com or www.abe.com or
www.alibris.com where you will find used copies at generally very
reasonable prices. To find booksales where used books are very cheap, go
to: www.booksalefinder.com

Good luck.