(This post has been deleted by Blogger because someone flagged it as malicious. No idea why. Then they changed their mind and returned the post in Draft state.)
While passing through forgotten boxes of forgotten components looking for some interesting TTL/CMOS ICs for an artistic project, I found two large XTALs for 2.0971 MHz. I think they were meant for some valve circuit, so I looked for an oscillator circuit with one of the tubes I have most: EF80.
Using the DIY B9A base I rigged together the most promising circuit I found online of a CW TX, with resistors "close enough" to quoted values. The ugly result is shown in the picture as well as the circuit diagram.
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| Diagram and test circuit. |
I fed 6Vdc to the filament and 150V HT and it did oscillate. Cool. Time for experiments.
I could reduce the HT to 30V and it didn't stop oscillating, alas the signal picked up by the nearby receiver was much weaker. I couldn't go with a lower HT with today test setup.
Then, while I was at it, I tested all EF80 valves I had already separated from the rest. Not happy with the result, I checked through the list and found out that EF183 and EF184 pentodes are pin-compatible with EF80, so they got tested too. I could even re-stamp a few tubes that had become anonymous.
The result of a couple of hours of fiddling with on/off switched of power supplies is that I have 28 working pentodes waiting to be used in a real transmitter.
Now: VFO or XTAL?
