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From: Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Grounded grid VHF front-end
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2024 11:19:14 GMT
Message-ID: <vgq4rj$eagg$1@solani.org>
References: <1r2rj8l.msi28f14weovyN%liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid>	<vgpiks$e1ei$1@solani.org> <vgq12n$ao84$2@dont-email.me>
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On a sunny day (Sun, 10 Nov 2024 10:14:47 -0000 (UTC)) it happened Cursitor
Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in <vgq12n$ao84$2@dont-email.me>:

>On Sun, 10 Nov 2024 06:08:27 GMT, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>
>> On a sunny day (Sat, 9 Nov 2024 16:35:45 +0000) it happened
>> liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid (Liz Tuddenham) wrote in
>> <1r2rj8l.msi28f14weovyN%liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid>:
>> 
>>>My current receiving aerial system is very inefficient at 2 metres (144
>>>Mc/s) and I have thought about making a sleeve dipole for that band.  My
>>>VHF receiver is an Eddystone 770R, which covers the band but only in a
>>>small portion of the whole scale.  While I am improvomg the aerial
>>>system, I could also make a crystal-controlled down-converter, that
>>>would allow me to use an HF communications receiver or the lower ranges
>>>of the 770R, so that the  band 2 Mc/s wide would cover a much greater
>>>scale length.
>> 
>> Have you ever considered using a RTL_SDR stick and a PC or Raspberry
>> program for reception?
>> Something I wrote for it:
>>  https://panteltje.nl/pub/xpsa-0.7.gif
>>   those sticks cover from about 20 MHz to 1.6 GHz
>> More abou those here:
>>  https://www.rtl-sdr.com/about-rtl-sdr/
>> even used one to receive GPS signals Those sticks are about 40? dollars
>> on ebay, accuracy 1 ppm.
>>  https://www.ebay.com/itm/276000566513?
>> 
>
>I'm sure Liz is aware there are far better modern alternatives out there, 
>Jan. However, this is (I believe) a purely fun project - and I've been 
>thinking for many years about doing a similar thing myself with tubes. In 
>fact I've retained a substantial collection of the damn things for 
>precisely this purpose. I always thought, 'one day I'll retire and I'll 
>have time to build something using these valves and it'll be a blast.' 
>Anyway, I retired 25 years ago and have even less time now for fun 
>projects than I had when I was working. Such is life...

When I had the teefee repair shop in Amsterdam in the seventies and early eighties
lots of partial tube sets for repair, tubes especially in the HV stuff, PD500 makes a nice x-ray source:
 http://www.kronjaeger.com/hv-old/xray/tech/PD500/index.html
had plenty tubes in stock, 
now I have zero tubes here...
When I started in broadcasting in 1968 more tubes in the studios than you can imagine, 
 https://www.historyofrecording.com/ampexvrx1000aniv.html
  note the racks with tubes in the picture on the left.


>>>It's been a few years since I designed anything with valves, so I
>>>thought I might have a go at making a down-converter using valves - but
>>>not necessarily the expensive 'cult' ones which everyone seems to regard
>>>as having magical powers.  The EF91 is plentiful and cheap as New Old
>>>Stock, so that seems like a good valve to start playing about with.
>> 
>> I remember ECC85 in FM tuners, should be fine at 144 MHz:
>>  https://www.radiomuseum.org/tubes/tube_ecc85.html
>> 
>> That circuit diagram shows an about 100 MHz to 10.7 MHz FM radio input
>> stage + mixer.
>> I have used that tube a few times.
>> 
>> But transistors took over, and now chips like in that RTL_SDR stick, are
>> hard to beat.
>> 
>> Sometimes I just strip some coax at the right length for antenna:
>>  https://www.panteltje.nl/pub/DVB-T2_antenna_IXIMG_0757.JPG
>> Have some yagi antennas too, and even an old TV rack..
>> And a big 27 MHz GPA antenna somewhere...
>
>Dunno if you have any of the RSGB-published books by Pat Hawker (G3VA 
>IIRC) but he had several designs for very effective antennas at VHF and 
>UHF made from lengths of old coax. The emphasis was always on economical 
>designs with old Pat. He grew up in the shadow of WW2 where you had to 
>make do with what you found lying around in the rubble of bomb craters.

I had a RSGB book, and in 1964-1967 period used it to design all that ham radio stuff..
Very nice book, learned a lot from it.
In the seventies in the studios more all transistor stuff,
but still CRTs and film scanners with CRT to scan film with photo-multipliers for red green and blue,
Not to mention the whole video camera stuff I worked with, evolving from inconoscope to plumbicons to CDD.
Designed and build my own portable vidicon based TV camera in 1968, that gave me the broadcasting job basically.
And that camera ran on nicad battery and was all transistor.

We had nice electronic magazines too, 'Radio Electronica', 'Electuur' (Elector?) 
and whatever I could get hands on in English.