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Author Topic: REGEN FEVER  (Read 24315 times)
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WU2D
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« on: September 15, 2009, 10:15:16 PM »

OK I admit it - I have Regen Fever...

First I did up a pair of 76's, than a pair of 6SK7's then restored one of those old Meissner two tubers and now I went kiddie - yes I built up the one tube receiver featured in Morgan's Boys First Book of Radio and Electronics. It was sort of for his 120th birthday party.

Anyway there is a nice link to the article for you regenerative nuts out there:

http://www.4shared.com/file/132692359/ad2319c6/Morgan.html

I have been having a ball with this receiver. Last night I was copying 10 Watt Fish Net beacons in the Atlantic between 1750 and 1850 KHz, heard a loud VP9 DX station on 1812 kHz, plugged in the lowfer coil and easily copied the 505 kHz Experimental guys, and then plugged in the 80M coil and listened to the 75M crowd.

As an experiment I hooked it up to my 120 ft longwire at high noon on Saturday September 12, 2009 with ordinary Consolidated 2000-Ohm Headphones. 36 stations were easily identified on the BCB at my QTH in Manchester NH. I have 2 strong local stations within 10 miles and there are several strong Boston stations to contend with. I then attached the same antenna system to my R-390A set in the 8 KHz position and was able to pull out 69 stations. This gives you an idea of what the little radio can do.

One tube...

Mike WU2D

 


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Mike/W8BAC
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« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2009, 10:54:12 PM »

Nice looking old school regen Mike. I have to admit I'm starting to get the same germ. I'm looking forward to having just as much fun some day. Thanks for the post and have fun.

Mike
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N2DTS
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« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2009, 10:31:58 AM »

My first receiver was a regen built out of the book of knowlage encyclopidia.
It used a 6SN7, and an interstage transformer, and worked ok.
I rebuilt it many times, putting it in different boxes and cabinets, which was great fun.

But its not much harder to build a good superhet, think old table top radio on short wave frequencies, add a filter and an S meter and away you go....


Brett

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Ed/KB1HYS
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« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2009, 10:38:18 AM »

Regens are so cool.  That such a simple set can do so much has always facinated me.  You can argue their faults, but as a simple project that can really get you fired up they are hard to beat. (A SS regen using a FET or two beats the pants of of some QRPp Altoids Tin xmitter any day).

Nice job OM, keep it up.

now build a nice one tube xmitter to go with that 'genny.


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73 de Ed/KB1HYS
Happiness is Hot Tubes, Cold 807's, and warm room filling AM Sound.
 "I've spent three quarters of my life trying to figure out how to do a $50 job for $.50, the rest I spent trying to come up with the $0.50" - D. Gingery
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« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2009, 10:40:41 AM »

Makes me want to go ahead and restore my National SW-3.

I  remember listening to 75 about 20 years ago on that receiver before the previous owner died and his survivors let it deteriorate in a damp basement.  Just below the point of self-oscillation, it would pull an AM signal right out of the QRM in the crowded 75m band almost as well as the R-390A or HRO, and the tuning was velvet smooth, too.
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Don, K4KYV                                       AMI#5
Licensed since 1959 and not happy to be back on AM...    Never got off AM in the first place.

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« Reply #5 on: September 16, 2009, 10:48:36 AM »

Regens are so cool.  That such a simple set can do so much has always facinated me.  You can argue their faults, but as a simple project that can really get you fired up they are hard to beat. (A SS regen using a FET or two beats the pants of of some QRPp Altoids Tin xmitter any day).

Nice job OM, keep it up.

now build a nice one tube xmitter to go with that 'genny.

http://amfone.net/Amforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=21254.0;attach=14031

I built that 1936 Frank Jones xmtr.  Built on a Poplar board.  Works great and have had a ball working many contacts with a grand 5 watts output.  Used 30's vintage components and even the old round holder xtals.  See pics on my QRZ listing.

73,  Jack, W9GT
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Ed/KB1HYS
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« Reply #6 on: September 16, 2009, 10:59:48 AM »

yep!  Jones 10 watter. Works with just about any dual triode you've got from 6s7s to 12AX7s have been used with success. Lends itself well to slat board construction too.



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73 de Ed/KB1HYS
Happiness is Hot Tubes, Cold 807's, and warm room filling AM Sound.
 "I've spent three quarters of my life trying to figure out how to do a $50 job for $.50, the rest I spent trying to come up with the $0.50" - D. Gingery
W2PFY
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« Reply #7 on: September 16, 2009, 11:30:00 AM »

I gave a friend a gassy 100TH triode. He made a regen receiver out of it. He said gassy tubes are great for building regens. My question is why are gassy tubes good candidates?






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« Reply #8 on: September 16, 2009, 11:39:43 AM »

A 100th as a regen receiver tube?
That has to be the strangest thing I ever heard of!

How about a 4-1000 regen or a pair of 833's?

I have a bunch of new old stock micro tubes, little triodes the size of lightbulbs, they might be fun to make a regen and little transmitter with.

I think they were used in early walkie talkies, you know, those shoe box sized ones....

Brett
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W2PFY
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« Reply #9 on: September 16, 2009, 11:45:39 AM »

Quote
A 100th as a regen receiver tube?
That has to be the strangest thing I ever heard of!

Yes, my friend said the same thing. A bit over kill but that is beside the point.

I'll give him a gassy 833 and see if he can make one out of it. Maybe he can drive a speaker directly with it Grin Grin
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« Reply #10 on: September 16, 2009, 11:52:12 AM »

When he makes the VHF version of the regen using a 100TH I will send him a copy of a construction article for the perfect preamp to go with it.  The preamp uses a pair of forced air cooled triodes in grounded grid and in the preamp they do require air cooling. 

I can hear it now, "my transmitter is p__s weak with a 6AQ5 final but my receiver really straps".
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« Reply #11 on: September 16, 2009, 11:58:41 AM »

Ok, I don't want to hi jack the thread, my original question is Why Gassy Tubes?


 
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« Reply #12 on: September 16, 2009, 01:06:12 PM »

Ok, I don't want to hi jack the thread, my original question is Why Gassy Tubes?


 

Yes, that was a fact that was used back in the really old days.  I'll start looking for articles from my OLD QSTs for using gassy tubes in RX's

Mike:  isn't there some way to remove the B+ from the headphones?  Sounds dangerous even tho' I know they used to use that approach in the old days.  Sort of rules out the newer headphones.

Al
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N4LTA
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« Reply #13 on: September 16, 2009, 01:16:54 PM »

Put an little single ended  output transformer 5K -  10K to 8 ohms or so to match the modern phones. They won't be as sensitive though.
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Barrie
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« Reply #14 on: September 16, 2009, 01:23:43 PM »

Boy, mentioning "Meissner" suddenly brought back memories!

When I was about ten years old, our Boy Scout troop leader showed several of us how to build a three tube Meissner regen from a kit.

I spent hours and hours in the basement listening to the one I built.  I was hooked on SWLing!  My parents had to drag me out of the basement when it was time to go to bed.

This all happened in about 1946.  We learned to send and receive Morse code in the Boy Scouts, too.

73, Barrie, W7ALW
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Rob K2CU
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« Reply #15 on: September 16, 2009, 01:45:17 PM »

How about using a vacuum display panel? you get as many triodes as there are digits, and each digit is a triode with multiple plates. The filament would use a single 1.5 V battery and the plate supply is a trio of 9 V batteries. IF I get a chance I will run some curves on one to see how much gain. As I recall, a couple of grid volts controls several mA of segment current. tying segments together could add up the plate current quickly. and the triodes could easily be paralleled.
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KC4VWU
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« Reply #16 on: September 16, 2009, 03:47:18 PM »

     I built a Regen for a homebrew contest a couple years ago and out of 5 entries, it didn't even place. I don't think half the judges even knew what it was! That's O.K. though; I had a lot of fun building it. I used the Morgan schizmztic, but I cheated and used a 6C5. I also used a metal panel to help reduce hand capacity effect.
     The next year, I built a built an old school PW rack style TX based on an article by Lew McCoy. I don't think he intended for it to be modulated, but I thought "Why not?". It is a MOPA design that I set up initially on 10M for lack of crystals at the time. On 10m, it doubles in the osc. and doubles again in the P.A. On top of that, I cathode modulated it! Put that in front of a 'strappin leenyar' and say "Excuse me, mover over there slopbucketeers!". I don't think the judges liked that one either, but since they only had two entries, they had no other choice but to give me second place!
  BTW Mike, I had to put the Hartly experiments to the side for now, even though I have a working breadboard model. I'm presently working to get a BC-342 going that I picked up at Shelby a couple weeks ago. Man, what a PITA! It's hard to get at anything to take measurements with all those shields and front end tube mounting!

 Phil


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KC4VWU
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« Reply #17 on: September 16, 2009, 04:04:42 PM »

    My next regen project is this:


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W3GMS
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« Reply #18 on: September 16, 2009, 04:30:43 PM »

Folks interested in building regen sets should contact Bill Hurni, W3HWT.   He has developed a real passion in developing these sets and has been amazed in the performance of these sets when applying some of the early articles dealing with minimizing circuit losses.  Going to lower loss coil designs, has made a large difference in performance of these sets.  Joe, N3IBX may have Bill's current email address. 
Joe, W3GMS
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KA8WTK
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« Reply #19 on: September 16, 2009, 05:08:57 PM »

How can you not like a vintage regen set?
Here is my Crosley 51.


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Bill KA8WTK
Carl WA1KPD
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« Reply #20 on: September 16, 2009, 06:31:28 PM »

How can you not like a vintage regen set?
Here is my Crosley 51.

My Crosley 51 tunes up to 160!
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Carl

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KI4YAN
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« Reply #21 on: September 16, 2009, 06:46:17 PM »

Sigh...both of my regens never work well. I tried all sorts of things, but they both have been dead as a hammer. Pick up the broadcasters on 41M fine, but never can hear anything else. Not even the local AM hotshot at 930kHz.

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Mike/W8BAC
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« Reply #22 on: September 16, 2009, 07:53:44 PM »

WOW, a Super Wasp. Awesome! Thanks for the pictures, Have fun.

Mike
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Ed/KB1HYS
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« Reply #23 on: September 16, 2009, 08:21:39 PM »

Ok, I don't want to hi jack the thread, my original question is Why Gassy Tubes?

Ok I'll take a stab at this.  I think gassy tubes were prefered for regens because a regenerative circuit has a very high gain, and using high gain tubes (like a 12ax7 or 12at7) could cause no end of problems.  A lot of regen circuits use very low plate voltage for this reason, (like 12v on a 6SN7 circuit!!) and they work very well and are easier to control the regeneration on.
Since back in the '30 most radio types were pretty broke, using a gassy, and therefor poor performing tube meant you didn't have to buy a tube, but could 'recycle' one into your receiver.
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73 de Ed/KB1HYS
Happiness is Hot Tubes, Cold 807's, and warm room filling AM Sound.
 "I've spent three quarters of my life trying to figure out how to do a $50 job for $.50, the rest I spent trying to come up with the $0.50" - D. Gingery
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Rick & "Roosevelt"


« Reply #24 on: September 17, 2009, 12:44:00 PM »

Phil,
Quote
I built a Regen for a homebrew contest a couple years ago and out of 5 entries, it didn't even place. I don't think half the judges even knew what it was! That's O.K. though; I had a lot of fun building it.

Nice repro.

& Great cloth covered wire, neat colors.  You cut the leads off a power transformer, huh?  Grin
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RICK  *W3RSW*
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