The AM Forum

During an AM QSO on 40 meters last night, the issue of home-brew vs. home-built came up. In this particular case it was in reference to a 'store bought' CCI solid state amplifier kit and low pass filter assemblies that the owner assembled into his own enclosure. He added his own power supply and relay switching of the low pass filters that tracked the band selected by the Flex 1500. His questions was, does this constitute home-brew or is it home-built?

Seems the terms are often used interchangeably. It's obvious that a new design and build from the ground up would qualify as home-brew ... as well as home-built. A straight kit build would seemingly fall into the home-built category. What about when you build a copy of someone else's design? Is that home-brew or home-built? If you use some different parts or make 'enough' changes does it then fall into the 'brew' category? 

Not a big deal in the overall scheme of things ... all home-brewing/home-building is good.  ;)   

     

Things slow in CT  :D

Well as long as you have to think things out and drill some holes it is still homebrew. Just the size of the building blocks change. I don't make my own I.C.s. But a rice box is a rice box.

Kit = Home built,  scratch built from plans (your own or someone elses) = Home brew

Your Design, built out of your junk box/improvised parts, and works first time out = Master Chief Home brewer

So he homebuilt an amplifier kit and homebrewed the switching!

Leave it to Rob to get us thinking.... ;D

I've often wondered what to call my 24 pill class E PDM rig.  Is it a kit or homebrew or a "homebrew kit"?  I notice most guys just call theirs' "homebrew", but are they?

For example, an Electrocraft has all the PC boards supplied - with ALL parts - and is clearly a kit.  However, the class E rig has most boards supplied with parts, but is missing things like the cabinet, chassis, PDM filters, RF devices and tank components, power supplies, VFO, external switches, etc.  Where is the line drawn?    Is there a certain percentage of time or parts needed to swing it one way or the other? With some rigs it can be a pretty gray area.

Maybe a better term for a class E rig is, "hybrid homebrew" or "homebuilt homebrew".  

In my case, I just call it "Rico Suave" ....  ;)

T

Ask yourself, can you repair it if it blows up.

Homebrew:

(http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b153/throbbo/hbrx1.jpg)

Homebuilt:

(http://www.oldradios.co.nz/gallery/anchors/HEATHKIT%20Mohawk%20RX-1.jpg)

Been there, done that, on many occasions....................

Homemade "cavatelli" using a home-built "cavatelli maker"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDvF_uhWWfY

Hmmmmm......interesting topic.  There is no way I would call a Heathkit home-built.  Home assembled but not home-built.  I mean, really, it's a complete kit and they tell you where to put everything and you don't do much of any creative thinking at all  :D

There is home-assembled, home-built, home-designed, home-implemented, etc.

The terms home-brew and home-built seem, in the common vernacular of ham radio, to be more or less synonymous among most people with whom I speak, and who use the term.  I hear home-brew used to describe what is mostly a home implementation, and I hear home-built used by people to describe transmitters that they pretty much designed themselves.  I suppose I use this term myself, and I designed every circuit in the rig!

I would think if you build a class E rig, and happen to use my boards in the project, you still have to do a LOT of improvisional work on your own; there is PLENTY of thinking involved and lots of creativity needed.  It's definitely home-built and certainly a unique implementation.  Substantial portions of it may be your own design.  The class E boards just save the builder time.

Same if you build Tom's 813 design.  You as the builder have to do a LOT of field design work on your own.  All of the implementations are different.

Anyway, that's what I think.  If you add a lot of value and/or creative work to an existing design, it's home-built.  If you actually design it, it's home-designed and home-built.  Most rigs that are "home-built" (or home-brew) that I've encountered are a combination of an existing design with some amount of individual design work involved as part of the implementation.

Sometimes the "individual" design portion is good and sometimes not so good  8)

I haven't had cavatelli in years, that stuff looks good! ! ! !

there is a HUGE difference between home assembled (griefkit) stuff and true home brew!! No comparison.

With Griefkit stuff, all of the hard work is allready done for you - - - - The chassis layout work! ! And furthermore, they publish instructions exactly how to assemble it.
(and some folks still cant get them right)

With true homebrew you design the circuit on paper, then you have to figger out where all of the parts want to live BEFORE you start drilling and blasting. I have worn out many sharpies and used up countless bottles of alcohol cleaning the ink back off and starting over again till you finally get everything where it wants to live.
It really makes for some head scratching and gets the creative juices flowing. Just simple stuff like the orientation of the tube sockets so all of the bottom connector pins are facing the right direction for ease of hook up can take alot of time and thinking.

Home brewing from scratch is a lot of fun, just not for the faint at heart. It really seperates the men from the boys! ! ! !

Here is some more, these are from my 4X1 transmitter

Yep, it's not hard to spot "homebrew"  vs: "home assembled kit" in the pics... ;)


Pic #1:  Rico Suave, 24 pill class E PDM rig  - QIX design.

Pic #2 : Fabio, class C 4X1, plate modulated by  pair of tetrode-connected 4X1's.

Pic #3:  WA1GFZ-designed  MOSFET audio driver for 4X1 modulators with heavy audio negative feedback.

I want to quote that.

Feel free,  No copy right intended :)

Why is it people who have no clue of solid state bad mouth it.

  Even the lowly regarded (around here anyhow) Heathkit may modded and reworked at pretty high levels. Building a kit shows more initiative than pulling a slop bucket rig out of a box and piping into a store bought amp.

  BTW, Slab Bacon, were all the rigs you show built by the same person ? The first group and the second look miles apart.

  Some people who have a good grasp of solid state still poke fun at it. Why are some folks so thin skinned (?) is the real question.

Yes, me,
       They are the exciter / modulator deck, and final from my 4 x 1 rig. The exciter / modulator used a brand new chassis pan, the final used a used steel chassis pan (black wrinkle) wrapped with a piece of aluminum skin. the top pix of the second group is the driver which is inside of the box on the exciter deck.

The final is completely shielded. (some shielding removed for pix) Steve took those pix before it was finished.

That rig was an experiment that worked so well that I am still using it 10 years later!!

 Just wondering. The methods and materials employed look quite different. Sometimes the shop equipment is a huge determining factor.

Hey Slab, how many modulators are on that exciter chassis ?

Other than the exciter chassis pan, all of the aluminum was recycled from the scrap box at work. that includes the rack panels which I cut from old 1/8" thick revolving door ceiling panels.........................


The "shop equipment" was a drill, a jigsaw, and a file!!

Also the circuitry is all out of my head, I have yet to pen down a skizmatic for it except for the basic modulation scheem to share it with others.

the 2 5933s (807Ws) are the screen regulator cathode followers (parallel) and the pair of 2E26s are the modders. 

that's for the 4x1, right ?

what do you use as a vfo ?

Also, please check you still have that 40" rack...I'm planning a trip !

Yeppir, and I use a POS drifty assed Globe VFO Deluxe for the VFO.

I will take a lookie for the rack this week, Ifn I still have it, you can see (and operate) it live and in person.

Frank,

I never get tired of looking at your 4-1000 screen modulated transmitter!  The construction is wonderful and it sounds fantastic on the air.  That transmitter has quite a heritage at the various festers as "the" special event transmitter.  I hope your treating it on its birthdays to something nice!  I remember very well when you were building it. 

Joe, W3GMS   

  The planning/ layout is all important. It really shows up with a very tidy finished product. Good, clean metalwork adds even more. Good work can be done with the most basic of tools . In the right hands , better tools make even better products. Layout, good pressbrake work, clean drilling tapping , edge finishing are the mechanical touches that add so much to otherwise electrical contrivances.
  On the air, no one knows but in the shack it shows  ;) The owner has a unique piece of gear as his reward.

In the end , home brewing is just one more facet of the hobby .

I have found that it can't be neat unless its been done before.  Having designed a LOT of transmitters that have never been built before (complete experiments in some cases), no matter how good the paper design is, there will invariably be changes needed... and this, of course, makes the project quite a bit less neat - the project is a prototype.

My shack is full of prototypes  ;D  And the projects definitely reflect the fact  :D

But it's just great getting something on the air that you are not completely sure (no matter how good the math is!) if it's going to work or not - and it DOES!  Even better when it works the first time with NO issues, but that is rather rare.  There's usually something if the thing is really experimental or very complex 8)

The 2nd or 3rd implementations ALWAYS come out looking a whole lot better than the first one!!

Neat has zero in common with performance.

You can have one, both or neither.

I've had a few rigs with neither.

That's pretty much my take.  I have always used the terms "homebrew" and "homebuilt" interchangeably. I have noticed in some other languages (French, Spanish and Italian), the equivalent term is approximately "home construction" or "home constructed".  To me, there is a difference between home-assembled vs home-built or home-constructed.

Some "homebrew" rigs are built right of the handbook and magazine articles, cook-book style, in which the builder buys all the parts brand new directly from the parts list, a step above kit assembly. Others, like most of mine are built in just the opposite manner.  I start collecting parts, or digging through my massive junk collection, until I end up with a pile of parts that I believe would make up most of the project, then design a circuit around what I think would best work with the parts on hand.  I usually do end up having to buy a few items I didn't have, either new, or what I can find used and beg, borrow or steal.  Inevitably, there are changes in the design before the project is completed.

Sometimes I build "by the seat of my trousers", by starting the project before the design is fully complete, and sort of designing it as I go along, using a lot of trial and error.  At other times, I completely draw out the circuit and sometimes even fully design the lay-out before even starting the project.

My recent "dawg-house" project was designed in stages.  I completely drew out the plans for the shelter structure first, then  went to the lumber store and looked over material available.  This required some modifications in the original design, but I eventually settled on a plan and built it exactly accordingly.  At the time, I had only a vague idea of how the tuner system would form and fit into the house.  Once the house was complete, I searched through the junk collection for what was available and came up with the plans for the mechanics and the switching system. I had to order some hardware from McMaster-Carr, but had everything else on hand, except for the voltage regulator I used in the indicator unit, and a couple of oddball resistors not in my junkbox.  I built the "homebrew" multi-wafer ceramic switch out of about 4 large ceramic rotary switches on hand, plus (to paraphrase Blown-Away Bob) "carving some of the pieces out of solid hunks of metal". Then, it was a matter of relocating the existing tuners, and mechanically linking everything together.  That was completely drawn, diagrammed and carefully measured before the first step of construction was started.  Everything went into place exactly as predicted, and there was very little "prototyping" in the project, although some details were not completely worked out until actual construction began, along with the usual few modifications in the final design.

So, it is a matter of degree.  At one extreme, one could hand wind all the transformers after stamping the laminations out of sheet metal and roll one's own capacitors out of tinfoil and wax paper. The other extreme would to buy all brand new parts verbatim from the parts list in a construction article (if one could even find them).  I think most of our homebrew projects fall somewhere in between.

For some fine examples of excellent HB work, this issue of QST in the Old Radio section has some samples of Bob Dennison's, W2HBE's (sk) work.  He was one that both made things look and work great.  I met Bob a few times and he was quite a guy.  A great EE as well as very good practical building skills.

Joe, W3GMS 

All of Vernon Chambers mobile transmitters were beautifully done. A real testament to planning . A little time on paper can make a huge difference in the end product. Experience is yet another plus.
At our work we barely have time to get it done by the show date. At times we can only wish we had the luxury of another go. Although it is more like work the second time, the first one is the real fun one.

There is no nicer rig than a well built home made / brew.
A fine example was the rig Rich bought at Deerfield.

This is why Steve should get the Golden Clip Lead Award.  ;D

Actually I am a little uncomfortable saying my E rig is homebrew.  I basically used someone else's design (guess who?) and even circuit boards. But there was a fair amount of things to figure out such as metal fabrication and the RF layouts. So I'll call it quasi-homebrew 8)

Peter

In the real world of high performance layout drives performance.

Gunsmith vs Gunmaker, same rules apply. The Smith is working on what already exists while the maker starts from scratch. As long as it works, though scratch built is soooo much more satisfying!

I'm not so sure that's true. Having done both there is a great satisfaction in bringing a long dead boatanchor back to life and using it.

As the proverb goes; Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I say cudos to both!!

This is very true. When you've been to the RF design school of W1GUC (Pete) and you listen carefully to his voice in your head as you start monkeying around, you won't go wrong.

Rob,
I went to the W1GUC Pete (SK) school of RF design. He was very sharp and knew his high voltage. I visited him at work once where he was playing with a 100KV power supply used for welding. The tank switch in my big rig was donated by him. I ripped it down and built it into the rig.

W1 Girls Understand Cash

Frank,

Pete was certainly amazing. He'd show up in my driveway for a cup of coffee, and would always have some chunks of radio parts for me that were surplus to his needs. After coffee, he'd back down my driveway and run over my mailbox with that old crap-box station wagon of his. Pete could fix anything and it would work better than new when he was done.

When I was building my 4-400 rig, he would quietly inspect my work and then make a remark like, "What the hell are you thinking about over here?" I'd point to a picture in the Handbook and he'd burst out laughing, spew a few expletives, and then draw it out "the way it should be" according to Pete. Whatever he suggested always worked perfectly. By the way, he handed me a bandswitch for my rig as well. It came out of some kind of military rig that found its way into his basement.

His skill with CW amazed me. He could carry on a conversation with you as you sat in his shack while he simultaneously listened to a high speed stream of CW in the background. In mid-sentence he'd burst out laughing and ask me if I had caught the joke they were telling in CW. I guess when you're that good, it really is effortless...

I miss having him knock over my mailbox.

Didn't Bob get electrocuted by contacting the HV while working on an amplifier, or am I thinking of someone else?

I remember Pete telling me to reuse the silver plated brass screws in the Mil rig my bandswitch came out of. He said to never solder high power RF connections, bolt them. W2ILA was sellling the same mil rig complete at Deerfield last year. Now that I have a silver plating set up I'll go crazy when I assemble the new tank.
I met him on 10 meters in the '70s

Ah yes, I believe Pete owned 28.680 and always had something monitoring there. He only lived about 3/4 of a mile from here, and my poor little K-woo TS-520 would fold up on that band whenever he had the Drake twins and the L4-B cranked up. He had quite the strapping signal on 10 meters!

We'll have to trade some legendary "Pete" stories sometime Frank!

:O)

Yup, That's where I met him. I ran a 2 element quad with a 4-1000A linear back in the late '70s. 10 meters was a lot of fun back then. Sometimes I could work JA's facing NW then work more shooting NE. 

There was a NE tall ship AMer who IIRC would always say "home-made" when describing his fine station.    He would point out that "homebrew" of course was the stuff you quaffed, as in a finely crafted homebrew beer/ale.   

                                                                             ;D

There was a guy by the name of Ralph from Syracuse that was killed by his SB 220 when he got across it in some way. I can't remember his call but he and Irb would go at it back in the 70's with their almost daily show. He could talk with Irb without getting %#@$$** off. His call started with a W2???  He was a retired air force officer as I recall.

W2WME

Yep. I remember he would call CQ and end it with something like:

"This is W2WME calling CQ on 60 acres of farm property near Utica, NY."

During one chat I had with Ralph, someone jumped in without identifying, and nervously informed him that he was 30kc wide. Without skipping a beat, Ralph said, "Oh really? How nice for you. Do you have anything else for me? If so, don't key your transmitter as you tell me your story, because I don't care to hear it. Have a nice day." Then he continued right on with our QSO. It didn't take much to get him going...

The FAA says that an aircraft can't be classified as "homebuilt" unless the builder does at least 51% of the work...Many Homebuilt aircraft kits come with 49% of the work done...The FCC has no such rule.....Good thing..

An excellent example of homebrewing/homebuilding*:

http://www.eht.com/oldradio/arrl/2009-01/Brian_Voth_W9ARZ.htm


* can't we also say; homemade, handmade or handcrafted? DIY?

 Isn't it great when "homebrew" doesn't look home-made ?  ;) The professional level stuff  looks mighty fine.

Hi Don,

Bob, W2HBE became an SK due to health issues. 

I sure remember when Ralph, W2WME got the ultimate zap which took him out.  He worked on the gear all the time and I was "shocked" when I heard the news about him.  A heck of a great guy to chat with on the air. 

Joe, W3GMS