Tim Shoppa wrote:

The autotuners that the neighboring hams have do not have knobs. They
just have a little button you push and then relays chatter and it
either succeeded or failed. There's a little LED idiot light to tell
you that it succeeded or failed.

I myself do not understand how a piece of radio equipment does not
have knobs. Or how it has little blinky LED's but no meters.

My homebrew tuner has alligator tips for selecting the turns on the
output link, as well as plug-in link-coupled coil sets for each band
and of course knobs on the variable caps. IMHO if a tuner has plug in
coil sets and alligator clips then you know you're cooking with gas. I
was looking a a picture of a station in the 1972 ARRL handbook last
night and realized that my tuner looks almost identical to the one in
the picture (which itself was probably 20 years old in 1972).

Tim.
Tim.

Boy, I sure know how you feel. Real tuners have knobs, real radios have
hot things that glow. Real airplanes are made from tubes and cloth and
have a wheel on the tail. Real cars smoke, get 10 MPG, and burn rubber.
And real women stay home, cook, and take care of the babies. It's really
tough to be stuck in 1957. I feel your pain.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL
(Charter member, OFC)

"Roy Lewallen" wrote in message
...
Tim Shoppa wrote:

The autotuners that the neighboring hams have do not have knobs. They
just have a little button you push and then relays chatter and it
either succeeded or failed. There's a little LED idiot light to tell
you that it succeeded or failed.

I myself do not understand how a piece of radio equipment does not
have knobs. Or how it has little blinky LED's but no meters.

My homebrew tuner has alligator tips for selecting the turns on the
output link, as well as plug-in link-coupled coil sets for each band
and of course knobs on the variable caps. IMHO if a tuner has plug in
coil sets and alligator clips then you know you're cooking with gas. I
was looking a a picture of a station in the 1972 ARRL handbook last
night and realized that my tuner looks almost identical to the one in
the picture (which itself was probably 20 years old in 1972).

Tim.
Tim.

Boy, I sure know how you feel. Real tuners have knobs, real radios have
hot things that glow. Real airplanes are made from tubes and cloth and
have a wheel on the tail. Real cars smoke, get 10 MPG, and burn rubber.
And real women stay home, cook, and take care of the babies. It's really
tough to be stuck in 1957. I feel your pain.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL
(Charter member, OFC)
-
LOL...me too. I'm also partial to panels that have the control labels
etched into the metal and filled with white paint
--Wayne

On Sep 29, 3:28*pm, Michael Coslo wrote:
I certainly don't have anything against old school radios and tuners.
Dunno if you have yours this way, but I would be inclined to mount that
alligator clipped tuner coil on a nicely finished wood base, and go
really old school pretty with it. Maybe *make the coil supports out of
the same type wood turned to a dowel or maybe even polished glass or
plastic. If yer going old school, flaunt it!

Base is wood (polyurethaned pine) and coil supports are polycarbonate.

Polycarbonate is so way better than the polystyrene insulators I had
when I was a kid.

Yeah, pretty cool!

Anyhow, it's all good, old or new. Gives me a lot more to mess with
since I like both.

I am way overwhelmed with old radio stuff, would never have time to
play with the new stuff :-).

One of my neighbors (older than me but a far more recent ham than I
am) has a new LCD-screen radio and he gets all excited whenever he
finds some new software parameter he can access through twelve layers
of menu buttons on the front panel. I just kinda nod my head, I don't
want to dampen his enthusiasm, but I don't really know what he's
talking about :-).

Tim N3QE