The AM Forum

Man !  I checked out the Meissner 150b that's on Ebay (see the for sale section for a link) just to see what it is.

Looking at the top of the cabinet, the thing *appears* to be chuck full of transformers - there must be 10 or 15 of them in there.  It looks like it must weigh 500 pounds and puts out - what - maybe 100 to 125 watts with a single 813??

Definitely a contender for the lowest power-output-to-weight-ratio (watts/pound)  ;)  And that doesn't even include a VFO, and as I recall the companion VFO probably weighs another 20 or maybe 30 pounds on its own (and still drifts and FMs if I'm remembering correctly from the '60s and '70s when there were a couple of them on the air around here).

Ain't that sumpth'n.

I think Tom, N1HCI uses one.

Definitely a BA table top rig..
Yeah I worked N1HCI the other day using one,
and  I believe KW1I uses one, quite often in Mil rad Net, and
W3NP has one, I saw in person, very impressive..

Yeah the 150-B, ummmmmm  ;D   A little over 2 lbs. per watt.  Uncle Ray beats it I guess, at least 4 lbs. per watt.  
If that one on eBay were not so dang far away I might be tempted to get it, but the front name plates are missing and the dummies broke the fil. switch (not a big deal to fix though) and I think it is overpriced and they are selling the POS exciter which is in really bad shape separately (starting bid $199!! it's worth maybe 30 bucks?).  Fortunately I already have the exciter in nice shape.  
All the Meissner gear was built to be put on a chain and used as a wrecking ball.   That rig will sit there and do 150 watts forever.  There are three chassis inside that come out so it can be moved by pulling them out and moving them individually then the cabinet.  Makes the job brutal as opposed to impossible without 3 guys.  But, about the iron.  All Stancor but beyond that I don't know.  Plate, fil, low voltage, modulation, filter chokes...you got separate RF and audio supplies including stage coupling...when you think about all that it starts to add up...there's an article on the 150B in ER issue 88 or 89, can't remember which.

Rob  

I almost bought the one that Dave (W3NP) now owns. We were both at Berryville that day and the guy that was selling it had it priced pretty reasonably. I really wanted it but.................................

I was still recovering from a really nasty back injury. The thought (and the pain)
of moving it around just changed my mind. the thought of further injuring my back at that time just turned me off and I reluctantly changed my mind. (I saw it before he did)

Yeah Frank, not the rig to have with a bad back, if you don't have one now, you will
after lifting that beast..

W3NP-Dave has nice write up of Messiner (hamfest special) and Pics of his restoration, on his page.

http://w3np.com/meissnerpage1.htm (http://w3np.com/meissnerpage1.htm)

If its like the Hallicrafters HT-9 I have
There is a separate PS for the exciter, the modulator and the final
add in the chokes interstage and mod iron, and you have a lot of metal in there

Carl

Funny Tom HCI is mentioned in relation to this beastie.  Yup he does own one and yup he has a bad back

Nice sounding rig.  Hope someone gives this one a good home.

Cue the song "youuuuu are so beautifullll"

http://w3np.com/images/meissner/866glow493.jpg

I was running one on the air for 3-4 years and recently passed it on to another rabid AMer. It is a great rig and the audio is excellent. They have negative feedback in the audio section. The way I figured it the transformer salesman helped with the design! He recommended one of everything. They laid it out on a barn door and went from there. I have a small electric forklift in the ham shack so no problem with the weight.
Skip

Yea but, you have a bigger toybox than me  :o  :o  :o  :o

Thats the wrong VFO. The 150B was prewar and used the earlier one with the plug in coils.

Most 150B's went to the Army and a Olive Drab VFO with a coil draw was part of the package. I have that VFO and use it often on 30M. Paid $10 at Deerfield 20+ years ago with the coils.

Carl

Carl,
Are you familiar with the Meissner model shown in the attached photo?   A red back lit pointer appears when in operation.  It is also a military unit I picked up and included all of the coils still sealed in envelopes.  The glue on the attached coil labels didn't last for 50+ years but otherwise it appeared perfect.

These are very useful VFO/exciter units.  I also have the older model with the metal dial and a later model with the turret coil unit.

Wayne N0TE wrote the ER article on the 150B that was in issue 89.  Yes, the appropriate s.s. is the one that matches the 150B transmitter gray wrinkle paint and has the coil drawer with the 18 coils and the Signal Corps plate on the front panel (although electrically probably any signal shifter will work).

Rodger, yours looks like the 1941 Deluxe model; I have one of those also but mine is not in as good shape as yours. 

Rob

I happen to have 4 of the EX models. Two are cherry originals, another has the 160M strip and the last is a rack model that has the 6/12M strip. I also had one in 1956-57 running barefoot on 15M CW before I got the Viking I.

Roger the one in your photo is the civilian version, maybe it was appropriated by the military.

The one purchased under contract along with the 150B has a tag from the Signal Corps, Meissner Part # 02433, and a 1943 contract date. In addition the dial scale is factory calibrated, can you imagine a soldier trying to figure out the civilian one?

Carl

Okay which one of you guys got the 150B that was on eBay?  I'm just curious that's all.
Probably no one here.

Rob

Someone with a lot of "spare change" lying around.  Big money for low power and excessive weight!!!

Not me, way too pricey plus Ive no room for it even if it could be crated for truck shipping. Maybe JN got it to go with his Trafficmaster ;D

Those sold items are civilian models, maybe purchased by the Army before the contract. But wrong color, no tags, coil drawer was only for the contract VFO, and included coils for down into the BCB and up to 18mc in later versions.

http://www.qsl.net/la5ki/org/me/150b.jpg

http://jpcummins.net/ad4s/fdim2001/P5190081.jpg

Ive had a lot of fun with that VFO before it moved to the ham bench. It makes a great little rig to rebroadcast streaming audio to the vintage radios scattered around here. Add a small modulator and pick a frequency in the BCB or elsewhere :o

Carl

Yep, in my case getting it here would add at least $400 to $500 for the cost--two days each way plus 6 tanks of gas making it a very expensive 150-B considering W3NP got his for free! 

What made this one kind of desirable was that all the coils and the three mica caps seemed to be there, although getting substitutes and doing some home brew coil winding would be easy enough. 

Carl thanks for clearing up the mystery about the paint color and why some are gray but with Army ID plates.   I'll bet this one was repainted at some point since the color does not appear to match the originals I have seen.

Yep! You're dealing with a scarce piece of history here, especially when you consider its completeness, condition, and overall scarcity. I think it went for the right price, kinda cheap for even a year ago. Think about it - where are you gonna get a Meissner 150B complete with new tubes and coils, for that kinda money?

True, it's not the same as building a Class E rig for $5 and a handful of parts from your junkbox, but being a bonafide piece of history with real meters, tubes, and transformers, it's in a class with very few others: rare, and pretty cool to boot. Would love to have one myself. Passed on an opportunity locally last year, been kicking myself since. Need to move more stuff out first.

You shoulda snagged it, Rob. It's just what you need!  ;D

$650 seemed on the high side considering the sig. shifter was not included and the WW2 Sig.Corps plates were not on the f.p.  What did the hamfest one sell for last year?   I was under the impression they go for $250 to $500. 

The other thing is that the $650 was the opening price.  The buyer got it for that because no one else bid, so even if I had tried to get it, it could have zoomed up depending on what the other guy's max bid was.  There will be others; I'm glad this one got picked up by someone so it didn't get scrapped.   Besides, even if I had gotten it and gone down there and brought it up here, it would probably sit in my garage for at least two years before I could do anything with it.

Rob,

There are probably several of them sitting in barns and basements here in the Midwest, hopefully some of them will make it to hamfests instead of the dumpster.  The Pierson KP-81 receivers and Halli HT-45 I picked up at Peoria a few years ago surfaced as part of a basement cleanup before everything went to the dump.  Two years ago a bunch of tube type audio gear was buried in a basement when the downtown area near the university was being remade as "uptown Normal".  I was in a suit and walking with the university provost so I didn't think that jumping a construction barricade to rescue tube type gear would be seen as appropriate behavior.  But had it been an HT-20 all the provost would have seen was the blur of a professor jumping into a hole in the ground :)

I drove down south of Houston to pick up my Ranger/Desk KW and I picked up a Viking 500 in AZ as part of a western trip but I just don't have time for long road trips like that now.  Plus I have enough projects already to keep me busy for a LONG time.

I hope you find a 150 next hamfest season.

Rodger WQ9E

" I was in a suit and walking with the university provost so I didn't think that jumping a construction barricade to rescue tube type gear would be seen as appropriate behavior "

Isn't that's what's Tenure's fer'??


klc

Hi Rodger, well I have enough to keep me busy so I can be patient.   :D   I expect that any around here are either being used or will come up for sale on the net, or on-line.  Most of the heavy rigs don't get lugged to hamfests, the exception being Dayton.   Maybe after I get the TR-1 going I'll figure one 813/811A rig is enough hi hi.  There have been a few choice rigs for sale way out west but dragging a trailer 4000 miles is too much for me.  I hope you find a HT-20 if mine doesn't wind up at ur place.  I wonder which is harder to find.  Tossup I guess.

Rob 

Both of my HT-9's came out of barns. The black one from CA and the gray in Northern VT. My son rescued the one in CA and had it truck shipped as part of his belongings to his military home of record and I drove to VT. Both are in excellent shape with no rust or mouse damage.

Those beasts are heavy enough along with the 32V2. I might sell a HT-9 for a HT-20.

Not really if you love old radios. Would it had been better if it had hit the scrap heap  :'( :'(
Once they are junked, history is gone. But then again, I'm not thinking progressively. I need to stop living in the past and scrap everything I own.

Nah, you're on the money, Terry. The same argument could be made against owning antique cars which are primitive, heavy, less efficient, and so on vs. a plastic Volvo, Toyota, or some hybrid. Or antique furniture, or books vs, CDs, etc etc.

Fortunately we don't live in a monolithic world. The variety of choices and opportunities keeps it interesting.

Obviously the scrap heap is bad - and this radio would never have hit the scrap heap - someone would pay SOMETHING.  I'm just saying that $600+ dollars is a LOT of money for the low power, arguably poor performance and very great weight.  Does not in any mean that these old sets are bad or shouldn't be used and certainly should not be scrapped!!!  There are many things in this world that are expensive and not very practical - and I'm sure I own plenty of them  :D

The way I look at it is the rig is supposed to do ~150 to 175 w. (depending on how good your 813 is) and that's only around 3 dB down from 300--not too bad especially if the owner has a decent antenna.  The lucky ones who can manage to get a dipole up around 100 feet or more on 75 could strap with this thing.  For the rest of us, it may be a daytime rig  :( but how can anyone not like the sight of four 866As?  (and full coverage 160 up through 40 m., the important ham bands  :D)

You could argue none of this stuff is practical if you use a smart phone or internet as your communications comparison.  But what hobby stuff (in any hobby) could pass the practical test?  But if you use FUN as your metric, other than moving (or buying) the Meissner it rates high on the fun scale even if it does offset the power savings of a whole boxcar load of CFLs :)

I spent last night setting up a Gonset vintage SSB station (G-63 receiver with GSB-100 phasing transmitter and GSB-101 amp with 4 811A tubes) and it is a lot of things but practical isn't one of them.  At least with the crystal notch filter the carrier suppression on the GSB-100 is a lot less critical to keep adjusted than my CE-20A.

Amen Rodger, that's my way of thinking.
The joy is in the climb as much as the destination!
If we wanted simple, we'd use a cellphone.


To borrow a snippet from something a wrote a few years back -->> http://www.w1ujr.net/everything_old.htm

One thing which I have noticed with many free time pursuits is that the serious practitioners always return to the roots of the sport.

Example, I was a very avid ocean kayaker when I first moved to Maine. The really serious in the sport left the latest and greatest fiberglass boats and asymmetrical plastic paddles and returned to native design boats and thin Greenland style wooden paddles. I was skeptical, but after some time I gave up my asymmetrical plastic paddle for a Greenland wooden paddle and never looked back. It was easier to paddle with and far more versatile.

I see this same trend in sailing, the resurgence of the wooden boat over fiberglass. A complete subculture and businesses have grown up around a technology, wooden boat building, which was once considered dead. Wooden boats have become the things of art, dreams and desires, and the commensurate work required for the upkeep just part of the wooden boat experience.

I suspect that some of the real draw to the early days of ham radio, vacuum tubes and home brew gear, has a great deal to do with this very observation. People crave the warm, tangible touch of an objects, the glow of a vacuum tube, the smell of hot dust as the tube warms up, the hum of the transformers, even the squeal of a heterodyne. I believe that people crave those very sensory experiences almost as much as the on-air contacts.

My point is that real, authentic experiences do not leave us quickly. Instead they light a slow burning fuse that lasts our entire life. Remember your first homerun in Little League, or your first touchdown in football. Those moments are indelibly imprinted on our minds for the rest of our life. So it is with radio, and I hope future generations will have the same privilege, experience and joy that I have discovered in the amateur service.

<<If we wanted simple, we'd use a cellphone.>>

The funny thing is that to me, the cell gadgets, and all the little wireless plastic doodads people get addicted to are much more complex and a time/money waste than running old tube gear.    Life is too short for waiting on hold for CrotchBox wireless customer service. 

Cell phones and anything else that will require an external, provided-by-someone-else intrastructure isn't going to be too useful when the infrastructure fails!  That's the REAL advantage of ham radio.

This thread has CERTAINLY degraded from the original thought that started it  ;D and that is simply a question as to why there are SO many transformers in the transmitter, and the the rig will be a definitely contender in the pounds per watt category !  No value judgements were stated or implied  :D

The thought came about because, for myself, as I get older, the thought of moving ANYTHING that's unreasonably heavy is not particularly appealing.  Sore back recovery takes a lot longer now than it did 30 years ago, when heavier was BETTER, at least in my mind  ;)

We were moving a number of years ago, and my wife asked me:  do I have to help move any of those heavy metal sharp things?  An accurate description, for sure  8)

Regards,

Steve

If you look at some of the older designs from the 30's and 40's, lots of transformers were used. Often, every audio stage in the audio chain was transformer coupled to the next. It was not unusual for 3-5 transformer sto be in the audio chain alone. Throw in a few filament transformers, LV and HV supply trannies and maybe even a bias supply tranny and you could end up with 8-10 transformers.

Also popular in that era was the two-section choke input filter for DC power supplies. So now you have two chokes in each DC supply! The iron added up fast.   :)

Yep, the iron sure required some strapping STEEL chassis and infrastructure, thus adding to the weight further.

Steve/QIX has always been an advocate of using the minimum amount of audio iron possible, esp for audio/phase shift distortion.  I took it to heart and eliminated all audio transformers in my 4X1 X 4X1's rig, except for the final modulation transformer and Heising reactor. It made quite a difference, though, I can still see some artifacts caused by the mod iron in the DEEP lows.

My Class E rig uses no audio transformers, of course, as well as the FT-1000D when used as an exciter/Linear combo. So, mission accomplished.

**  BTW, Frank/GFZ's very FB  MOSFET audio driver board will be coming out as a circuit board. Someone is finishing it up now and will post the details in the near future. Highly recommended to go from one volt audio to driving most ANY set of tube modulators, from 811A's, 813's,  to 833A's, 4-1000A's, etc without an audio driver transformer needed.

T

PC board is up and running. There are a few trace spacing issues but it works. Maybe Rich can post some pictures. I'm working on Rev A design

You got a schematic available?  I have a direct-coupled driver I'm using here (as an experiment) that will develop plus and minus 300 V (600 V P-P).  It would be interesting to compare notes before your next etch rev is completed.  I imagine the circuits are similar, but there are always differences.  I can post my schematic as well when it's reasonably finalized.  I do not have any intention of doing a board.

Regards,

Steve

Building and operating a xmitter with a coat, vest, and tie cancelled out the phase shift and weight problems  ;D

...i've werked ed, k0bka on 160...his sig from that thing is great...

..sk..

Tim, I worked him last weekend and got all excited when he told me what rig he was running.   Unfortunately something happened that took him away from the QSO, a phone call or something (we were in a 4 or 5 station roundtable) and he never came back.  I was all ready to ask him a bunch of questions about it like if he's running the 866As or s.s. the p.s. but didn't get to talk to him about it.

Rob

Ah yes! I owned the beast in 1957 as a new "Conditional" class ham. I will never forget it as it threw me across the room and haven't been the same since!  :) Dick/K1DPM

Well I bought the 150-B.  Was a great buy at $650, was like new.  Had all the coils, essentially new tubes, like new manual, bunch of MIL spares - and the seller threw in the Signal Shifter gratis with all its coils as well.

I pulled out the stock speech section (poor response curve and limited drive into the 811s).  It is now HA-100 UTC to 6SN7 PP to pair PP 6W6s (great sleeper pentodes) with fixed bias, cathode loaded Peerless choke (from 175watt PP 811a Altec 1570B audio amp) into the 811 grids.  Added individual bias pots and test points to balance the 811s for minimal hum max PSRR.  The new speech section does 20 hz to 30KHz flat and still going strong out to 80K at 195vRMS.

Just now finishing up the new speech section (adding stout 80v bias circuit for the 6W6's) and getting ready to bring this old beauty up on bench to confirm both 866-based HV PSUs, and modulator and RF sections still work to spec.

I'd have paid $1000 for it once I saw it in the flesh...  It will use my DAP610 multi-band EQ/compressor, Gates tube preamp and fat SM-7 voice-over mic.    Alan Freed on WABC...

It will be a mate to my nice old Collins 51-J3 as my AM station.

73 de K5LRX

Very nice - why not post some pics?

And welcome to AMFone.net, by the way ;D

Look forward to working you with that rig !  Also during the AM Transmitter Rally.

Regards,

Steve

I have posted a Meissner 150-B for sale here on the AMFONE web site.  I want to sell it here and then meet the buyer at NEAR-Fest in NH on Octpber 11-12, 2019.  Here is a link to a video of the radio. https://youtu.be/SZLI2vRCpMI

73
Paul N. Gayet AA1SU

PS The Meissner 150-B has been sold to Todd KA1KAQ.

Watts per pound?
Non-Broadcast rigs?

(I know this is an old thread...)

But I think this one may go to the judges for a ruling?
The CONTENDER for the TITLE!

The SUPREME Transmitter!

All 60watts of plate modulation!
(well it's listed as 100)
29.4 inches WIDE
And, 125 pounds!

One just acquired by W2TRH, Steve, at the most recent Suzzicks NJ hamfeaster!!
(generic image, although Steve's looks about the same)

                              _-_-

Steve got a nice transmitter. Would love to have that with the old rigs here.

At 125 lbs it's just over 1/3rd of a 150B which weighs in at 305 pounds. Add in the external exciter and you're bumping 350.

Interesting in that it's clearly a pre-war design but was drafted into WWII service without a BC- number. The nomenclature tags simply say Meissner 150B. 

3 Words - Thordarson Meissner Inc.