AJ Lake wrote:

If you only tested your tube receiver against *some* receivers then
your claim about outperforming *all* SS receivers would be invalid.

I've tried them against the *very* *best* receivers available today, and
they win in /every/ respect. They're actually hybrid receivers - I happily
use semiconductors where they're more appropriate (like in synchronous
demodulators, audio filters, audio amplifiers, local oscillators and so
on), but the really crucial parts - the RF amplifier, first mixer, IF
amplifiers and product detectors all use bottles.

There's one crucial parameter that's carefully omitted by most
manufacturers, which is the behaviour of their receivers in the presence of
strong adjacent frequency interference. The intermodulation, de-sensing
and other disasters inherent with semiconductor designs mean that I'll get
better results /every/ time.

I've designed /commercial/ solid-state receivers, and there's just *no*
*way* to get results as good as can still be obtained from valves in
crucial parts of them!

I haven't seen /any/ digital processor
that assists me in actually picking signals out of QRM.

*You* not having seen any doesn't mean there aren't any.

I've tried most of the stuff on the market, and /none/ of it can really
enhance a truly good receiver. They /might/ compensate for the obvious
shortcomings of some of the more average receivers!

pseudo-selectivity given by digital filters with all their nasty
artifacts)

Selectivity is not usually my problem. With close neighbors and a low
wire antenna, it's man made noise that is my problem. Digital does
well with this.

I'm in the happy situation that I don't suffer from too much of that,
despite living in a city (London). There are some really effective
noise-cancelling methods that have been published over the years - one
approach I used successfully in my old QTH was the counterpoise method that
was published years ago in RADCOM.

I'm happy for you if you're happy with your digital Rice Box

Yes we have hams here that are also 'Rice Box' prejudiced.

I'm not prejudiced at all - as soon as Far East Asia produces something even
half as good as I can build, I'll save time and effort and buy them! In
the interim, I'll continue with what I consider to be the real essence of
our hobby, and build the gear myself!

Prejudice for everything produced in Asia is silly these days.

Not at all - they /still/ can't make a good mobile phone! 8-)

Bob

having the patience to learn a skill will in fact tend to protect a
valuable
resource from degradation by being flooded with impulsive personalities.

The old having to learn the code will keep the whacko's out just
doesn't stand up. The biggest offenders on the SSB 75M mess are code
tested Extras...

Sure it does. You can't keep all the nuts out but you could make a big dent
in the problem. The fact that so many nuts were whining and crying to be
let in was proof of that. Some figured ways around the system. A VE team
around here got busted selling licenses. Took their licenses away and
called everyone in to retest elsewhere or lose their license too. Most of
them got booted out. Yay!

Some of the nuts just blew a head gasket and learned from the other monkeys.
Monkey see monkey do. Birds of a feather flock together. I suppose you
think the fact that the nonsense is worse now is just society imploding It
would probably be even worse but I suspect the only thing in the way of
complete animal regression was Riley and the Ham Call Sign. If everybody
quit using callsigns though there would be a bloodbath. They have the
technology now to get a fix within a few seconds. If there were ever a push
it would be an easy roundup. When they got tired of that they would just
outlaw ham radio entirely. Up till now they have only made a real effort
when vital services are jeopardized. They don't really consider ham radio a
vital service anymore because ham radio is losing credibility.

Maybe you can think of some test or hoop besides CW to discourage the people
that act out like morons because they lack self-control.

"Bob" wrote in message
...
AJ Lake wrote:

If you only tested your tube receiver against *some* receivers then
your claim about outperforming *all* SS receivers would be invalid.

I've tried them against the *very* *best* receivers available today, and
they win in /every/ respect. They're actually hybrid receivers - I
happily
use semiconductors where they're more appropriate (like in synchronous
demodulators, audio filters, audio amplifiers, local oscillators and so
on), but the really crucial parts - the RF amplifier, first mixer, IF
amplifiers and product detectors all use bottles.

There's one crucial parameter that's carefully omitted by most
manufacturers, which is the behaviour of their receivers in the presence
of
strong adjacent frequency interference. The intermodulation, de-sensing
and other disasters inherent with semiconductor designs mean that I'll get
better results /every/ time.

I've designed /commercial/ solid-state receivers, and there's just *no*
*way* to get results as good as can still be obtained from valves in
crucial parts of them!

I haven't seen /any/ digital processor
that assists me in actually picking signals out of QRM.

*You* not having seen any doesn't mean there aren't any.

I've tried most of the stuff on the market, and /none/ of it can really
enhance a truly good receiver. They /might/ compensate for the obvious
shortcomings of some of the more average receivers!

pseudo-selectivity given by digital filters with all their nasty
artifacts)

Selectivity is not usually my problem. With close neighbors and a low
wire antenna, it's man made noise that is my problem. Digital does
well with this.

I'm in the happy situation that I don't suffer from too much of that,
despite living in a city (London). There are some really effective
noise-cancelling methods that have been published over the years - one
approach I used successfully in my old QTH was the counterpoise method
that
was published years ago in RADCOM.

I'm happy for you if you're happy with your digital Rice Box

Yes we have hams here that are also 'Rice Box' prejudiced.

I'm not prejudiced at all - as soon as Far East Asia produces something
even
half as good as I can build, I'll save time and effort and buy them! In
the interim, I'll continue with what I consider to be the real essence of
our hobby, and build the gear myself!

Prejudice for everything produced in Asia is silly these days.

Not at all - they /still/ can't make a good mobile phone! 8-)

Bob

The biggest issue is manufacturing costs. DSP can do a few neat tricks, but
most of those were doable with analog circuits. DSP also adds to the noise
floor. What they are really doing is saving money on quality physical
components like filtering. I had my TS2000 right next to my TS830 and the
830 sounded so much better I almost took the 2000 back. There seemed to be
some high frequency noise that I really couldn't hear but I could sense it
and it gave me a headache after a while. It actually FELT noisy. It wasn't
until I hooked it up to my SP230 that I honestly couldn't tell the
difference in the audio and performance of the 830 and all was well. BUT
the TS830 had better adjacent frequency performance because of the 8 pole
crystal filters. I would still have that radio but I had to move and made
the choice for general coverage. I still have a TS130, and I use that at
Field day to swap out those new high dollar big shot radios that can't hack
the signal overload. It seems the TS130 uses Bandpass filters in the front
end, injection and exciter stages in addition to the 8 pole crystal filters.

There are RF tubes that can do up to 10 meters with plenty of gain and much
better overload capabilities than what's out there now. It might cost a
fortune to use that quality of filtering in a general coverage receiver, but
you COULD build a really first class hybrid that blows away what's out
there.

Bob wrote:

I've designed /commercial/ solid-state receivers, and there's just *no*
*way* to get results as good as can still be obtained from valves in
crucial parts of them!

The rest of the transceiver industry (other than you) apparently
thinks tube embedded HF transceivers are quite obsolete for a wide
variety of reasons. Else they would be manufacturing and selling them.
Even ham magazines print mostly solid state articles using modern
solid state parts, which is right since hams should learn to use
modern technology. When they do print a tube article it's usually
described as nostalgia.

I'm not prejudiced at all -

You used the term "Rice Box" to describe your dislike of a whole range
of several hundred ham tranceivers. Different manufacturers. Different
models. Pure prejudice. Logically you should judge equipment on its
individual merits, not by the race of the people who made it.

I'll continue with what I consider to be the real essence of
our hobby, and build the gear myself!

Building is but *one* facet of the hobby. Professional engineer hams
capable of designing and building transceivers are a but very very
tiny part of the hobby...

Not at all - they [Asians] /still/ can't make a good mobile phone! 8-)

As I said prejudiced...

"JB" wrote:

You can't keep all the nuts out but you could make a big dent
in the problem [with a cose test].

This is an old argument. It is the 'weeder' argument. A code test will
weed out all the bad apples. It hasn't worked in the 50+ years I've
been a ham. There have always been ham whackos.

In the 60's I listened to a daily net called WCARS (West Coast Amateur
Radio Service- called Westcars) on 40M SSB in CA. They suffered daily
harassment, carriers, unidentified obscenities ect. 75 meters SSB was
bad then also. The IDed offenders were all code tested hams, likely
the unidentified nuts also.

A VE team around here got busted selling licenses.

There has always been some cheating on tests.

In the 50's you could get a Tech license by mail. Your buddy ham could
give you the code test and any adult could proctor your exam. I don't
have to tell you there were some no-code open-book Techs licensed.

And I think Bash came out in the 70's. That's where they were stealing
the FCC exam questions and answers and publishing them in a book.
(Questions-answers are SOP now but not then.

Maybe you can think of some test or hoop besides CW to discourage the people
that act out like morons because they lack self-control.

Sure. A psychology test...

AJ Lake wrote:



The rest of the transceiver industry (other than you) apparently
thinks tube embedded HF transceivers are quite obsolete for a wide
variety of reasons. Else they would be manufacturing and selling them.
Even ham magazines print mostly solid state articles using modern
solid state parts, which is right since hams should learn to use
modern technology. When they do print a tube article it's usually
described as nostalgia.

Except the Russians. They were still using tube gear in their military
back in the mid 80s. Not susecptible to EMP (electromagnetic pulse)
from a nuke going off. They may STILL be using tubes...I'm out of the
loop since leaving the military in the late 80s...

Probably one reason there aren't more tube projects in QST, etc. is that
nobody is left who wants to learn an "obsolete" technology and the old
timers aren't going to bother writing about them because all they would
hear is bitching about how someone wrote an article on old technology
and wasted the pages in QST, etc. Just a guess.

Scott
N0EDV

JB wrote:

There are RF tubes that can do up to 10 meters with plenty of gain and
much better overload capabilities than what's out there now. It might
cost a fortune to use that quality of filtering in a general coverage
receiver, but you COULD build a really first class hybrid that blows away
what's out there.

I did, and it didn't "cost a fortune". I got the crystal filters at a
Rally, I had many of the other components in the junk boxes, and I just had
to buy a few valves and some coil formers. I built the cases myself, and
the internal module boxes are just soldered up PCB material. I found the
reduction drive in a junked HRO, and bought the tuning capacitors very
cheaply. Frequency indication and relative signal strength are shown on an
LCD display.

Bob

AJ Lake wrote:

Bob wrote:

I've designed /commercial/ solid-state receivers, and there's just *no*
*way* to get results as good as can still be obtained from valves in
crucial parts of them!

The rest of the transceiver industry (other than you) apparently
thinks tube embedded HF transceivers are quite obsolete for a wide
variety of reasons. Else they would be manufacturing and selling them.

They still do, in /professional/ receivers, though it's becoming rare due to
the component cost. I also find that it's much easier and cheaper to go
QRO with valves than it is with semiconductors. TV sweep tubes powered
many of my HF amplifiers over the years!

Even ham magazines print mostly solid state articles using modern
solid state parts, which is right since hams should learn to use
modern technology. When they do print a tube article it's usually
described as nostalgia.

Most of them are scared that they'll get sued when some know-nothing-numpty
gets bitten by the HT! I use semiconductors where they're appropriate and
use valves when they are the best way to get the results I want. I really
don't care about your perception of nostalgic engineering - I get better
results with my hybrids than are /possible/ with semiconductors alone.

I'm not prejudiced at all -

You used the term "Rice Box" to describe your dislike of a whole range
of several hundred ham transceivers. Different manufacturers. Different
models. Pure prejudice. Logically you should judge equipment on its
individual merits, not by the race of the people who made it.

Believe me, I've tried most of them, and some are actually quite good.
However, they simply don't match up to the performance of the receivers I
have here - I've got my own hybrids, a Plessey PR 155 (probably the best of
its genre), a couple of Eddystone boxes and a couple of "Sailor" marine
rigs. There's /nothing/ that's come from Asia that can match /any/ of
them!

I'll continue with what I consider to be the real essence of
our hobby, and build the gear myself!

Building is but *one* facet of the hobby. Professional engineer hams
capable of designing and building transceivers are a but very very
tiny part of the hobby...

Not over here! Many Hams here are disappointed with the high-priced junk
that comes from Asia, and find that it's very satisfying to build and
operate proper home made gear. We also have a lot of QRP operators (mostly
under 1 Watt) that simply won't be heard by those equipped with the Asian
black boxes!

Not at all - they [Asians] /still/ can't make a good mobile phone! 8-)

As I said prejudiced...

Oh dear. Perhaps you can't understand what's been said: The Asians are
great at making stuff smaller and cheaper (I used to design for Panasonic),
but they're *not* innovators, and everything's made _down_ to a price
rather than _up_ to a specification. I find that attitude to be
frustrating, and many companies I work for have abandoned that paradigm,
and want to produce the best equipment, whatever the cost. That's why
Nokia and Motorola make the best mobile phones, and Sony had to buy
Ericcson in an effort to play catch-up!

There's no actual prejudice involved at all, just a simple statement of
facts!

Bob

On Sep 22, 8:32�pm, Scott wrote:
AJ Lake wrote:

The rest of the transceiver industry (other than you) apparently
thinks tube embedded HF transceivers are quite obsolete
for a wide
variety of reasons. Else they would be manufacturing
and selling them.

There are several reasons you don't see much manufactured tube gear,
such as a "modern" version of the TS-520S.

The first reason is cost. Getting tubes and tube-type parts made in
the quantities needed would be more expensive than using solid-state.
Manufacturers can't use parts found at hamfests/rallys/on eBay, and
gearing up to have stuff made custom is expensive and chancy. The
complexity of the rig in ways such as needing both high and low
voltage supplies adds to the cost, too.

The second reason is size.

The third and most important reason is that tubes have become electro-
politically incorrect. Admitting that an old technology can do
something - anything - better than a new one just rubs people the
wrong way. Putting a 7360 in the front end of a "modern" transceiver
would be an admission that there has been a better solution around for
decades, and a lot of folks don't want to admit that.

As a case in point, look at the Elecraft K2. When it was introduced
back in 1999, it blew away much more expensive rigs in many
performance criteria. Yet its hardware design is much simpler than
almost anything else on the market that comes close to its
performance. Worse, it turns the usual marketing ideas upside down in
that the basic rig is QRP and CW only *kit*, with 100W, SSB and many
other features as add-on options.

The conventional wisdom of 1999 said there was no market for such a
rig. But with almost no advertising over 6000 have been sold. And the
product line has grown in several directions since 1999, including the
K3, which has sold over 1500 units.

Even ham magazines print mostly solid state articles
using modern solid state parts,

How many complete multiband multimode transceiver projects have you
seen in US ham magazines in the past 10 or 20 years?

which is right since hams should learn to use
modern technology.

But who decides what is "modern"?

Is SSB "modern"? It was first used on the air in the 1920s, first used
by hams in the early 1930s, and has been commonly used by hams for 60-
odd years. Almost no other service uses SSB anymore.

Is AM "modern"? It was first used on the air in 1900, and by 1906 was
being heard across the Atlantic. It was common by the 1920s.

How about FM? It's only a couple decades newer than AM. Repeaters were
in common use in the land mobile services in the 1950s.

RTTY dates back to WW2, and although the mechanical teleprinters have
been replaced by computers the coding and FSK methods used are
basically unchanged for half a century plus.

Most of the technologies we hams use have long been abandoned by other
services, or are simply kept alive because of the large installed base
of users - which is slowly dwindling.

When they do print a tube article it's usually
described as nostalgia.

You mean history.

Except the Russians. �They were still using tube gear in their
military
back in the mid 80s. �Not susecptible to EMP (electromagnetic
pulse)
from a nuke going off. �They may STILL be using tubes...I'm out of the loop since leaving the military in the late 80s...

EMP was one reason, but there were others. A big one was that they had
the industrial capacity to make high quality tubes in huge numbers,
but not semiconductors, so the solid-state was reserved for where
nothing else would work.

Probably one reason there aren't more tube projects in QST, etc. is that
nobody is left who wants to learn an "obsolete" technology and
the old
timers aren't going to bother writing about them because all they
would
hear is bitching about how someone wrote an article on old
technology
and wasted the pages in QST, etc. �Just a guess.

Not exactly.

QST is a general-purpose magazine; the technical stuff largely goes to
QEX., which was created just for that purpose because the QST staff
got and keeps getting complaints that QST is "too technical" (!).

Way back in 1989 a magazine called "Electric Radio" appeared, and is
still going strong. It's a small mag that specializes in hollow-state
gear, but there's plenty of interest and homebrewing going on.

Most of all, the internet has made it possible to put far more info
out there than could fit in a magazine, without the cost and bother of
printing and postage. Even I have a webpage (google my call) with a
picture and description of my shack and rig. The resources out there
are incredible; the main problem is getting through it all!

73 de Jim, N2EY

On Sep 22, 8:24�pm, AJ Lake wrote:
"JB" wrote:
You can't keep all the nuts out but you could make a big dent
in the problem [with a cose test].

This is an old argument. It is the 'weeder' argument.

And it has some validity.

A code test will weed out all the bad apples.

No test will weed out all the bad apples. Particularly not a test that
is given one time only and then is good for life.

Consider all the testing that doctors and lawyers go through to get
their licenses. Yet there are still some doctors and lawyers who are
"bad apples". That doesn't mean the testing should be eliminated since
it doesn't do a perfect job!

It hasn't worked in the 50+ years I've
been a ham. There have always been ham whackos.

Of course. No test or screening method is perfect.

But it is human nature that people will value something more if they
have a personal investment in it.

In the 60's I listened to a daily net called WCARS (West Coast
Amateur
Radio Service- called Westcars) on 40M SSB in CA. They
suffered daily
harassment, carriers, unidentified obscenities ect. 75 meters
SSB was bad then also.

But was it as bad as in, say, the 1990s? As bad as the W6NUT repeater,
say?

The IDed offenders were all code tested hams, likely
the unidentified nuts also.

But you don't know for sure about the unidentified ones. Plus in those
days all US hams were allegedly code tested.

Most of all, note that the bad behavior you cite was all on voice, not
CW/Morse Code. The bad apples may have passed a code test at one time
or another, but they weren't *using* the mode!

A VE team around here got busted selling licenses.

There has always been some cheating on tests.

In the 50's you could get a Tech license by mail. Your buddy ham could give you the code test and any adult could proctor your
exam.

The exam procedure varied over time, and by the mid-1950s the person
giving both code and written tests had to be an FCC licensed amateur
or commercial operator. But it was all on the honor system.

I don't
have to tell you there were some no-code open-book Techs
licensed.

More importantly, there was the Conditional license until the
mid-1970s. The Conditional was a by-mail version of the General, if
you lived far enough away from an FCC exam point. From ~1954 to ~1964
the distance was only 75 miles, and there were a *lot* of Conditionals
licensed.

One "trick" I heard of, but was never able to verify, was that a would-
be ham would give the address of a vacation home, friend or relative
in the "Conditional zone" in order to get a Conditional license. Then,
after some time passed, the ham would "move" to his/her actual
address.

One of the big reasons for all the screaming about "incentive
licensing" was that in order to upgrade, Conditionals would have to
take tests at FCC offices in front of FCC examiners.

And I think Bash came out in the 70's. That's where they were
stealing
the FCC exam questions and answers and publishing them in a
book.
(Questions-answers are SOP now but not then.

Yes, the infamous Bash books appeared in the 1970s.

What Bash did was to ask people leaving the exam sessions to recall
whatever they could about the questions. He may have even sent folks
to exam sessions simply to memorize what they could of the exams. He
allegedly paid $1 per question reported. Over time he collected enough
bits and pieces to reconstruct the entire exam set.

In doing so, Bash revealed the big secret of the FCC exams: There were
only a few different versions of the various tests! That was why there
was a 30-day wait to retest.

Some in the FCC wanted to prosecute Bash, but the FCC leadership
overruled them. Then budget cuts in the early 1980s forced FCC to
create the VE system, and the Q&A became public. Which put Bash out of
business.

Maybe you can think of some test or hoop besides
CW to discourage the people
that act out like morons because they lack self-control.

Sure. A psychology test...

It should be remembered that one of the factors which drove "incentive
licensing" and other testing initiatives was the cb experience. FCC
never imagined that huge numbers of people would simply ignore the
rules, but within a few years of its creation, 11 meter CB was simply
out of FCC's control. Breaking the rules became much more common than
keeping them, and to this day FCC has not gotten the upper hand.

Now, why were hams so well-behaved compared to cbers, even when FCC
spent far less resources to enforce the rules on the ham bands?

73 de Jim, N2EY