Radio Shack Views, including some history.

updated on December 20, 2020

      VU2ESE visits W7ZOI Shack.  

      W1FB and W1DX  (how I knew them...)

      Lunch with K7QO     

W7ZOI, Then and Now..

  W7ZOI in 1957.

The gear in the above photo is pretty common for a novice, or post-novice station of the era.   The Viking Adventure kit transmitter was driven by a remotely-tuned VFO built from a description in the 1954 ARRL Handbook.   The receiver is a four band outgrowth of the "SSB Q-5er," which consisted of a crystal controlled converter ahead of a BC-453 Command Receiver.   The Novice Q-5er and the SSB Q-5er were creations of W6TNS as published in CQ Magazine.   A National NC-46 receiver provided general coverage listening in an era where there was a lot to be heard.     My antennas were simple low dipoles or a vertical of one sort or another.    


This is the shack as it appears in January, 2019.  

The station in 2016 and later generates a power similar to the Viking Adventure shown above and is still mostly CW, but is now all solid state.   Much of the present station is homebrew.    Click on the station photo below for more views.  
     

The antenna photo shows rotary dipoles for 15 and 10 meters.   This antenna seems to also function on 17 meters when the transmatch is used.   The array is 28 ft up on a push-up mast that is rotated by hand.       

Our homebrew gear is built in another corner of the basement.   A view of the lab/shop is shown below.
  The lab is dynamic in that it changes frequently, depending upon the experiments being done.   The photo shows the main lab oscilloscope, a Rigol DS1052E.    The 'scope moves between rooms, depending upon the needs.   Two spectrum analyzers and a VNA (N2PK type) are included in the lab.    Out of view we also have an HP4342A Q-Meter and an old analog Tektronix oscilloscope.    We have recently added a microscope facilitate SMT work.

Some other history.

  While on a 2013 trip to Florida, we spent a couple of days with John Lawson, K5IRK, and his wife Carol.    John and I collaborated on a receiver project, the "Progressive Receiver." (QST, Nov, 1981)    Click on the receiver photo for a shot of John and me with the receiver.   (John is the one with the hair.)   John tells me that the original receiver still works just as it did in 1981.   John replaced all of the electrolytic capacitors to achieve this status.    Guess even our 1981 solid state homebrew receiver has reached boat-anchor status.     

A major ham experience in my past was my participation in EME.  I helped Fred and Susan Telewski, WA7TZY and WB7BST, with a station for 432 MHz.   Their EME station was first put on the air in November 23, 1975, so we could work a group at the large dish at Stanford University.   We devoted an all-night session to the project, finally making a contact at 5 AM.    I returned the next morning in daylight to get a photo of the antenna before it was moved to Fred's back yard where it did not irritate the neighborhood.   (The photo below was by Fred.)  The antenna was a 128 element extended expanded co-linear (bed spring) on a polar mount, an outgrowth of a QST paper by Joe, W6FZJ.   (Remember him?)  Great fun -- many thanks to Fred & Susan.
WA7TZY, WB7BST, and W7ZOI in 1975.  I have a color version of this photo on the wall of  my shack. 

   WA7TZY (sk)

This photo of Fred Telewski, WA7TZY, was taken the last time I saw him.   He and Susan met us at a reception at the Seattle Space Needle in 2013.   It was an amateur radio gathering associated with the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques sponsored International Microwave Symposium.   We lost Fred in the summer of 2020 at age 74 when he died of complications following heart surgery.  

I first met Fred when he joined Tektronix in the early 1970s.   Fred was a circuit design engineer in the spectrum analyzer group while I was also working at Tek in a group called "Display Device Development,"  far removed from his world of circuit design.   We had a connection through amateur radio and related writing that we had both done. (See ref 1 below.)  I joined Fred in the Tek spectrum analyzer group in 1974.   Fred and another ham, Larry Lockwood, W7JBY (sk) were my mentors in this transition.   Fred eventually left Tektronix for greener pastures, but remained on the west coast.   We stayed in contact and would talk on the telephone a couple of times per year with our last call only two days before he entered the hospital for surgery.  I'll miss those calls as well as our occasional QSOs on VHF and above, or personal visits at meetings in the Northwest.   Fred’s amateur radio interests were dominated by VHF and UHF including 432 MHz EME.   Fred preferred EME contacts where the CW signals were heard by the operator.    In later years his ham interests moved toward chasing DX on the 160 and 75 meter bands.    Fred's other interests varied from ball room dancing to color photography, including the color processing.   We'll miss him.

Ref 1.  Telewski, Fred, “A Practical Approach to 432-MHz SSB,” Ham Radio Magazine, June, 1971.    This was followed by a paper in Nov. 1971 on a 432 MHz Corner Reflector antenna.