🎤🧹 (KR4ECS)

@llorenzin and I were in Asheville over the weekend and were on campus at AB Tech for an event on Saturday when we saw a sign for the Asheville Radio Museum.

Following the signs through the building and up to the 3rd floor, we found a lovely museum with working tube radios including the centerpiece Zenith Stratosphere (of which there are only ~40 left in existence). They have a Bluetooth to AM transmitter setup in the museum room so they can play music the radios will pick up, and it sounded amazing!

They also have a lot of ham (and other) radio gear and a full ham radio station setup in the corner that operates as W4AFM.

Wonderful little museum, and both the docents we talked to were great! It was fairly random that we were there, the museum was open, and we had the time to stop in. I highly recommend going to the Asheville Radio Museum if you're in town.

#HamRadio #AmateurRadio #Museum

4:17pmWeb
Show threadByron N4TIZ10h ago
@mbroome @llorenzin it is a cool place to visit in Asheville 👍
Show threadLukefromDC10h ago

@mbroome @llorenzin In 1985-1986, I actually used a transmitter with a solid state exciter board and a tube driver and final amp for FM pirate radio broadcasting.

Why? Because the 6146B VHF capable power tube was still available common and cheap at hamfests and two were in the house from a partially disassembed ham trasmitter my father had built a half-century earlier. I didn't have a source for decent VHF power transistors until late 2006.

Show threadLukefromDC56m ago

@mbroome @llorenzin That transmitter was built inside the case of an old first generation Compaq portable computer. I had no idea that would later become collectable!

The former CRT compartment became the power amp compartment, the driver and solid state board on the right. The hard part was this: due to the anodizing, it was a real bear to seal up that case against RF leaks. I had to take an old TV, attach a length of twin-lead to the antenna terminals, and with the transmitter running on dummy load and the TV tuned to Channel 7 probe around the transmitter to find every harmonic leak!

In the end, all of the vented parts of the case had to be lined with aluminum window screen, and every edge of that screen had to be glued after application to keep loose wires from escaping and creating shorts.

You do NOT want your pirate radio setup to be the reason someone cannot watch football...