"Uncle Peter" ) writes:
"COLIN LAMB" wrote in message
...
Hello Miken:

I If you are going to use integrated circuits in a glowbug receiver, you
need to hide them, since it is unbecoming and might cause others to
ridicule the otherwise heroic effort to recreate a glorious radio. A
simple tube can do a wonderful job of putting out 100 kHz signals, and if
you want 50 kHz, you can use a neon bulb divider.

Many of the simple receivers I built would have been lost with a 100 kHz
marker. A 1 MHz marker would have been more useful, and even then I was
guessing at the which MHz it was. The best marker was simply a crystal in
the ham band and a known point. Something like 3550 kHz, which could also
be used to spot at 7100 kHz. Even odd marked frequencies are useful -
then a properly hand calibrated graph laminated on the front panel (ala
HRO) will give a feeling that none of the wonderful new rigs can touch.

73, Colin K7FM


Colin

do you have a link for using a neon lamp as a frequency divider? This is
the first reference I've seen for this, and I'm fascinated to learn more
about it.

Peter


When I saw Colin start to suggest a tube calibrator, my thought was
"what will you use for a divider, a neon bulb?"

But like him, I can't put my fingers on a circuit. Undoubtedly
somewhere someone did build a crystal calibrator with a neon divider
to get closer together markers, before there were IC dividers.

Another common place would be electronic organs, they'd use neon
bulb dividers to get the next lower octave from a master oscillator.

I'm sure in those "101 things to do with Neon Bulb" books, or even
the wide coverage articles in the magazines, would have a divider.

One Rufus P. Turner book I do have from the tube era has no such
dividers.

I can't find the one book about electronic musical instruments that has
a lot of organ circuitry, which likely does have dividers.

Tube era frequency counters likely used them to some extent.

I am blank about how they worked. It may be like a synchronized
oscillator, using the crystal oscillator to sync a free running
neon bulb multivibrator.

There were also pulse counters, collect pulses until they voltage
of the collected pulses trigger something and it starts over again.

I'm sure I've seen the basic principle, whatever it is, used with
unijunction transistors and even 555s, they all operate basically
the same. But I sure can't find an exact reference in the books
I have handy.

Michael VE2BVW