The AM Forum

Lots of extra holes, the wrong power supply (voltage is to high and dropped by resistors and VR tubes, extra parts, etc...

Looks pretty darn nice to me.

Nice Work!

I like it!  I especially like the freq meter pickup.  ;-)

Rich

Brett,

Please fill me in, What dose HBSR stand for? I assume it is a tube front end for a Software Defined Radio receiver? Obviously, everybody else here knows what your up to but I can't quite figure it out. Thanks.

Mike

Mike,
HBSR stands for Home Brew Superhet Receiver.

The pix are of the experimental receiver number one, number two used 7 and 9 pin tubes and B+W coil stock in the LO, not the slug tuned forms, and it drifts on startup much less.
Otherwise, I think number one works a bit better for some reason...
 
Building a very good receiver for 160 to 40 meters is very easy, think about an All American 5 with a good filter and an s meter.... the filter is the key.


Brett

Hi Brett,

Any ham who builds his own receiver nowadays is very FB in my book!

Good work, OM!

73,

Bruce

Nice work OM.  You have built yourself a nice receiver there.

I agree with Bruce Homebrew receivers rock. I have to warn you that it becomes a disease.

It's easy to get caught up thinking about all of the SDR stuff and not think about the obvious. It was an easy mistake to make seeing the SDR screen above the HBSR. Thanks for clearing it up.

By the way Brett, I made my mistakes years back of not making room to work on things. I like the way your racks are laid out for operator convenience and keeping the backs wide open. I now enjoy the same convenience. Nothing worse than a one hour job taking two days because of hidden wiring. In my opinion, a neat wiring job should be displayed and appreciated just as highly as fine equipment. Nice work!

Mike

Looks like the IF cans are mounted inside octal bases?  Good idea!  Nice work Brett

The IF cans are mounted in octal sockets because I did not know if they would work, and the holes are easy to make. I only have PC mount cans, which are hard to mount on a chassis.

Not a good idea though, as you want short leads to prevent problems.

They were handy for trying different setups though.

The receiver was easy and fun to build, and very educational.

Below is a pix of someone who built my design, but did a much better job than I did...

Brett

That example is neat but I think your classic "heavy metal" construction is more aesthetically pleasing.  Your receiver looks very nice I think and the octal mount for the IF cans is a very clever idea.

Rodger WQ9E

Very nice tube receiver, Brett!   Not many HB tube version around these days.  It certainly looks like a fun project. You were smart to have lots of room in there.  The digital readout is a great idea. Did you set it up to copy ssb and cw too?  Is it operating in the shack?  Do you have a pic of the front panel?

Here's my version below. It's an 11 tube superhet for 160- 40M.  The front panel came from a line of rigs I built back in 1972. The station was all homebrew and featured an AM/ssb/cw transmitter with Collins mech filter, receiver, pair of 813's linear - and a station control system and tube CW keyer all built into Bud "Shadow Boxes."   The only thing that has survived is the receiver front panel which I used for this receiver built around 1994. I call it the "GTO Blue Receiver".... ;D   I used a silver base paint and translucent candy apple blue paint -lacquer rubbed out.  Should put it back on line soon.  It has a detector output jack for FB hi-fi audio on AM.

Fun show and tell session.  Maybe there's some more out there with pics?

T

My HB is on the shelf. I want to rip out the synthesizer and install an HP8640B cavity oscillator with dividers to get it down to 40 MHz. Dual conversion solid state 96 dB dynamic range. It can become very addictive.

Wow, now THAT looks nice!
My rx has a bfo in it, A 455 KHz xtal osc which I use to zero a signal in the passband, and I can copy cw and ssb, like the old pre product detector receivers used to....which is poorly....

I could add a product detector, but don,t think I will.

I am thinking about (collecting parts for) a cw rig (RX and TX) using tubes, the same basic receiver design but with a product detector and different agc design, and something like a 6146 as the transmitter output tube, but its on the back burner at the moment.
 
Brett

there is a 455 KHz 16 khz wide filter on ebay/ racal today

http://www.kiwa.us/kiwa455.html

Their filters are the bomb!
Just like mechanical filters, maybe better, with no loss and easy to hook up.

I use them in the homebrews, and you can have a really strapping signal just out of the passband and not know its there.
It works best just after the mixer.

Brett

I have quite a stash with 8 RA6830s. 6.8 and 16 kHz filters sound real nice.
Mechanical filters used in Racals also pretty good but Cubic mechanical filters are better quality. All made by collins but racals are in plastic cases while Cubic filters in solder sealed cans.